Comments on: London’s history proves the public benefit of public data

By: Richard S

Richard S — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 22:08:27 +0000

Recognizing the problem was one step; then a solution was needed:

In Lambeth, behind the Fire HQ, there’s an extraordinarily ornate crumbling Victorian building. The carved ‘relief’ above the main door is “listed” but the building is not marked.

It’s the surviving corner of the Doulton pottery HQ.

Doulton invented salt-glazed ceramic sewer pipes: These prevented seepage into the drinking water sources: Doulton became rich; Became Royal Doulton…

However, many people were poisoned by fumes from the Lambeth pottery kilns and other industries…

By: Ian Brown

Ian Brown — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 14:22:16 +0000

Richard Dawkin's excellent latest book (The God Delusion) has a chapter on the human problems of thinking outside a very limited range of spatial scales. Edward Tufte's classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information has a spectacular exposition of the cholera story

By: Ideal Gov administrator

Ideal Gov administrator — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:21:40 +0000

Thanks Marek. I’m a bit wooly on all this and have never done (nor ever will) most of the background reading I need. When it draws on community wisdom I find this blog works really well. If it’s just a subset of what I can get my head round or just a place to leave stuff I dont want to lose then it’s far from ideal .

By: marek

marek — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:09:52 +0000

Though Udell’s post doesn’t explicitly make the connection, all this is drawn from Johnson’s book The Ghost Map – http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0713999748/1667 – well worth reading for all sorts of reasons, but for ideal government buffs particularly as an example of public policy making in conditions of uncertainty (to say nothing of downright ignorance). That remains very relevant, since it more or less describes all public policy making.