If I had just woke from a 5-year coma and read that the real estate market had collapsed, and that the government had spent over $200 billion dollars to bailout nearly every major American bank, how many of you could explain what happened?
Many of us couldn’t, and that’s an unsettling statement considering that we just lived through it. But it’s not your fault. The media has turned into more of a spectacle than the informative service it was designed to be. The biggest spectacle of them all is Fox News, I’m looking at you Shepard Smith. With all of their exploding sound effects and fancy graphics, it feels like you’re watching a poor mans Independence Day. Except there are no aliens, and the movie never ends. CNN, CNBC and even newspapers aren’t doing any better.
Enter Jonathan Jarvis and The New Mediators. The business sounds like a rock band, and Jarvis is already a rock star when it comes to conveying complicated issues in a simplistic fashion. He does this by using graphic representations for events and combines them with fluid animations and tops it off with transparent, unbiased commentary.
The graphs, imagery, and animation make for a very entertaining but informative experience. The best part is that Jarvis even has his own exploding text that would make Fox News’ knees weak. Simply because Jarvis uses them with integrity.
Jarvis intends to keep the progress moving forward as he will take on more real-time challenges. He actually uses the same giant touch screens as every major news channel, except he uses them for something more than debating or CGI firestorms. He is informing the public of what is happening with a brilliant display of understanding.
Now I won’t get ahead of myself and say that this should be used for every public speech and presidential address. But the fact that the government has a new ability to speak clearly to the public and doesn’t utilize it doesn’t make sense. The government should take some of that stimulus talk and stimulate the way they speak to the public.
With increasing complexities of government operations, we can only hope that more people like Jarvis will take the reins and keep all of us informed. Using technology as a tool to keep us connected to the government.
New Blog Post: Visualizing Our Problems: New Techniques for Government 2.0 http://snurl.com/pni0h #gov20 http://bit.ly/gJGId
August 11th, 2009 at 6:01 am