This is an old Eyebeam R&D Project. If you haven’t used Fundrace, try it out. There’s something amazing about having access to the information. But what is happening exactly? Accoutability? Transparency? What is the result? Maybe we should talk to Jonah.
Excerpt of NY Times piece
Fundrace was created by a small team at Eyebeam, a New York-based nonprofit arts organization that focuses on emerging technologies. The basic data at the site – the names, addresses and occupations of contributors and the amount of money they have given to a presidential candidate – is part of the public record and supplied by the Federal Election Commission.
But Fundrace takes the information further by subjecting the location data to geocoding, a process that assigns a latitude-longitude coordinate to an address. Once a donor’s address is pinpointed, it can be searched according to its proximity to any other point – say, your address.
“All of a sudden, campaign finance is not some abstract thing,” said Jonah Peretti, 30, the director of research and development at Eyebeam. “You’re actually able to see that the guy on the third floor of your apartment building gave money to Kerry and your boss gave money to Bush and one of your co-workers gave to Edwards.”
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Street Maps in Political Hues