CNN analyst John King’s Magic Map

Politics always has its blowhard pundits, but when it comes down to it, it’s all about numbers. Data from states, counties, men, women, blacks, whites, Asians, and every other way you can slice up America. How do you present that data without being boring? My last post focused on an intuitive graph method; this post highlights a really impressive video presentation method.

If you follow technology, you likely know about Microsoft Surface, a multi-touch table that Microsoft wants to get out to people. A company called Perceptive Pixel apparently already has a technology out that can accomplish this. You can see a demonstration video here that shows how cool this technology is.

Being able to throw up maps, videos, charts, and whatever other media you have onto this screen is impressive enough. Being able to manipulate them, draw wherever you want, tap on pre-definied hot spots (such as states or counties) to bring up extra data, and numerous other neat toys? It makes for a very smart presentation of a lot of data.

Observe this YouTube video from CNN’s John King. He is talking about North Carolina in the Democratic primary race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. You can see how John King shows videos supporting his points and sections off portions of North Carolina to demonstrate where the candidates need to win:

Technology helping to present mounds of data in an understandable way to a large portion of the population? That’s human factors at work.