Mary Panttaja

Continuing the conversation about awareness of the planet, here is an interesting world-based organization that is working to figure out how statistical technologies (data collection, analysis, graphical visualizations) can help us make more effective decisions. The OECD is an organization that concerns itself with the evolution of our societies:

The OECD brings together the governments of
countries committed to democracy and the
market economy from around the world to:

• Support sustainable economic growth
• Boost employment
• Raise living standards
• Maintain financial stability
• Assist other countries’ economic development
• Contribute to growth in world trade

The OECD also shares expertise and exchanges views
with more than 70 other countries, from Brazil, China,
and Russia to the least developed countries in Africa.

And they have a special focus on statistical data and what it can tell us.

For more than 40 years, the OECD has been one of the world’s largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistics, and economic and social data. As well as collecting data, the OECD monitors trends, analyses and forecasts economic developments and researches social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and more.

The Organisation provides a setting where governments compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and coordinate domestic and international policies.

There is a useful post by Michael Arrington in TechCrunch this morning. He spoke at the conference and discusses some of the technology that is evolving to capture the massive amounts of data and help us visualize what they mean. It’s another case of increasing awareness of the planet, in a more social construct, and using that awareness to make choices.

It makes me think about the simplistic and probably dumb systems we have all built over the years, that, if nothing else, have enabled us to evolve solutions that may really mean something in the biggest of pictures.