Inspiration

Do you feel like you're going through the motions, that your thoughts are at a standstill, and that you can’t seem to find inspiration? It happens to all of us from time to time. The good news is it doesn’t have to be like this all the time. This article will provide "inspiration for dummies" (er, make that “beginners”) and show how even small changes in your attitude can make a big difference in your life.

Social Read Poster is an IBM Watson project designed as an application programming interface (API) for building visualizations on social data, with a focus on insights related to reading habits and culture. The tool allows users to explore connections between people, books, and ideas to discover new insights and stories from the data.

"Social Read Poster explores the different ways people connect through reading and how this changes over time. The initial data we used was taken from freely available sources, including the book review site Goodreads, the library-oriented catalog system WorldCat Local, and the social network Twitter." explains IBM Watson Social Media Developer Advocate Bill Franks. "The potential for using this type of data is vast. With enough access to social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, we're really only limited by our imaginations. We've been thinking about what could be done with data from Instagram and Flickr, for example. We just need to come up with some interesting questions."

Here are 40 of the most popular submitted visualizations that provide a sense of the types of stories people are telling with Social Read Poster.

Some fascinating stories were discovered by IBM Watson's team when they visualized social media content using their Social Read Poster tool. Here are some examples:

The book that went viral in China was "Dream of the Red Chamber". The social data from this book showed that it was read not just by scholars but also by politicians, soldiers, and housewives. The story of the Red Chamber was not just about a book but also about the lives of the characters in the book and how they were shaped by the history around them.

Before he became a human rights and political activist, Clyde McClain was a sanitation worker in Washington DC. He was fired after his union discovered that he had worked with people who were members of an elite, inner circle of powerful people who were against all civil rights and considered subversive. "The story is here," says IBM Watson's Ashwin Krishnan. "The chapter titles are not just there for decoration but also help to convey what is happening in this story."

"This visualized dataset featured multiple infographics on public perceptions about global warming. When we looked at the social data, we found that this was a contentious subject with people who were skeptical about climate change. Interestingly, it was not only the most educated who were for or against climate change; levels of education appear to have very little impact on someone's belief in global warming."

"This network shows how people are interrelated in the story of "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Tracy Chevalier. In this story, Vermeer is not just a character but there are also references to his work and career. The author uses these references to explore the central relationship between Vermeer and his wife. We found that there are a number of strong connections in this network, probably because Vermeer's wife was a famous painter in her own right."

"This story features numerous literary allusions along with references to the film "Back to the Future". It shows how works of fiction can have an impact on people and their perceptions of time and time travel. The visualized dataset was conducted using information from Twitter. In this case, you can see how these different threads are interwoven."

In case inspiration strikes you, here is how Social Read Poster looks:

The creators of Social Read Poster hope that people will use the tool to find some stories about the world. They also plan to improve the tool to make it easier to use and as a way to explore other types of data.

(Source: IBM)

(Source: IBM Watson Blog)

Other Free Resources:

Other Web Sites on Inspiration & Creativity & Other Brain Stuff:

https://www.tedxjakarta.com/speakers/#/ashwin-krishnan/about - Ashwin Krishnan, IBM Cognitive Business Solutions Global Leader, and IBM Watson Social Media Developer Advocate discuss how we can use technology to search for unexpected insights about people.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ashwin_krishnan_how_to_use_social_media_to_discover_the

http://www.ibmwatson.com/platforms/cognitive-business/blog-entries/social-read-poster

https://www.tedxjakarta.

Conclusion:

After reading this presentation, you should know better how to use Social Read Poster. And, if you would like to see how it's made, visit this blog and watch this video.

Since we're talking about popular visualizations here, I want to show you another one that's really popular - the "Stroop Effect" that Gareth Cook and Cheng-yi Chu created . It's not just fun to look at and understand; it also helps us understand more. Try this small exercise with me - take a minute and try to identify the color of any word in the following: believe

A big thanks for everyone who contributed these datasets (we didn't include everyone!).

Inspiration

Inspiration

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