Steven Johnson gave a talk at d-Construct 2008 on the Urban Web. This is my summary of what was said, and the bits I found most interesting.

He told us a fascinating story of the Cholera Epidemic in London and how one outbreak, a map visualisation and combined local knowledge helped them figure out that contaminated water was the cause of the disease. It was a brief summary of his book 'The Ghost Map'. He then went on to talk about how the web, combined with geographical data could bring us all closer to our communities and local knowledge.

He mentioned Tufte, who I've heard people talk about before and meant to read up on. Edward Tufte wrote some books on data visualisation and was described by The New York Times as "the da Vinci of Data".

There's so much information on the web including a growing number of blogs, micro-blogs and photo sharing. It's produced by companies and individuals, but he suggests that the most relevant stuff, is the stuff that's close to us physically. He's created a site called Outside In, that brings you 'hyper-local' news; a fancy and probably made up term that means stuff really close to you (i.e. half a mile from your house). He showed a really nice example of how it alerted him to a van burning in a nearby street, almost as it happened and even sent him photos that people had uploaded. The site has also allowed him to find the 'blogiest neighbourhood' in America, although I can't remember which one it was.

He talked about thinking beyond restaurants when it comes to the geographical web. This really resonated with me and has given me a lot to think about.