Consummation of the adversarial

The Vibrant Data Project attempts to make data more engaging, penetrative, and influential. As a first step toward achieving this goal, it has a definition of the modern press that is hinged on the role it played during the recent Arab Spring:

... disruptive flows of data, tools for analysis and visualization, and vehicles of communication and collaboration that have the potential to overthrow corrupt regimes, spread powerful new ideas, broaden economic opportunity, bust open corporate transparency, improve health and well being, and empower the protection of civil and political rights.

Even before the revolutions sprang up, the media's confrontational role was growing, broadening in terms of the issues it addressed and the kind of people it became relevant to. The Arab Spring was just the consummation of the adversarial.

The reason I'm going to have an eye out for this project (apart from contributing in any way I can) is that they're addressing the issue of information-penetration in just a way I would have: by democratizing data, assuring a routine delivery of value, and, most importantly, looking at data itself in terms of what it does rather than in terms of how it is generated.