The Genealogy of Influence website is exactly what I was looking for. It’s a “a visualization of the connections between the most influential writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians of Western culture.”
What I want now is exactly the same thing, except for Prince Edward Island. Something like this *:
Link from boingboing via Fabrica.
* Note that this is a random selection of politicians “back room boys” and should not be taken to indicate actual spheres of influence.
Comments
That sounds cool.
So why isn’t your relationship tree a straight line like the family trees of every other Islander?
I recall you mention something of this kind more than a dozen years ago.
What would be neat is if something like this was “open” such that anyone could suggest any link between two people. I see the links being descriptive such as “worked for”, “were dating in high school”, “served in same cabinet” etc…, and contributors would choose their own descriptions and add as many links as they would like. Then each of those links would be given positive or negative credibility votes by the general public. Extra weight would be given to the votes of those who are linked to the subjects mentioned (more weight the closer the link). Credibility votes would be converted to the color of the physical links. Click the “darkest” or “reddest” links and read the description which folk think is the most credible, click the bluest or lightest and read idle gossip — or what folk generally consider to be so.
It would be a lot of work, but if it was intuititve, and it worked, it could pretty much ruin life in PEI as we know it:) Currently, information of this kind is the stuff of whisper campaigns among relatively closed circles of people. If such a site was successful then any advantage an “elite” would have over anyone else with respect to what’s really going on would be substantially reduced.
It would scare the hell out of people.
This is what secret police have done since forever to figure out networks of mobsters and insurgents. e.g. You see a chart like this early in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” You start with lots of place-holder pseudonyms. “Who is Chretien’s secret line to Binns?? We know she has red hair and ponytails from yesterday’s sighting. Let’s call her Ann.”
Facebook does this—establishing all sorts of networks and groups. Of course none of it is verifiable.