LINKED DATA – Raw Data Now! What does he want and when does ...?

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Tim Berners-Lee

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uploaded by Maireid Sullivan

Tim Bernes-Lee created the World Wide Web when he developed 'http" (hyper text transfer protocol) while working as a contractor at CERN Lab in Switzerland during the 1980s, and he convinced CERN to release this program to the public domain –FREE.

What does he want and when does he want it?
He wants all of us to make RAW DATA freely available, and demand it be done now.

Tim's lecture on TED.com is about the next exciting developments on the WWW! 

"Foggy but exciting" –this is what his boss at CERN had to say, back in the 80s, on a memo response to his idea to create a program that would allow the myriad of scientists who gathered at CERN to share their data. Two years passed before Tim's boss gave him  permission to develop his 'idea' on his free time.

During his talk, Tim refers to an earlier TED talk by Hans Rosling:
"You've never seen data presented like this."

His views on "silos' - closed program systems, such as FACEBOOK, vs open programs, such as Google and Wikipedia, are worth considering. His idea is based on an ever expanding linkage of information, whereas the actual agenda of "silos' is to keep data to themselves. To my mind, the difference is everything, when it comes to protecting privacy, and enhancing free speech and free thought.

"For biography, no matter how tactfully it is written, has the effect Sartre described years ago, of imposing a false teleology (*) on its subject, of giving a shape and meaning to the life which it did not have for the one who was living it. Letters, on the other hand, are so moving because we live each moment with their author and time takes on the dimension it has in our own lives: of being more like a well into which we are perpetually falling at a deceptively slow pace than like a well-lit road along which we travel, our destination clearly visible ahead." Gabriel Josipovici

If someone has limited information on me, they can use it against me, whereas if all information 'recorded' about me is "linked", there is a better chance that my privacy and personal freedom will be preserved. In other words, I don't mind if a government agency collects data about my activities, if the law requires ALL available data is included on their files - so that information is not prejudiced. In other words, I'd like to require that government operatives must also read and analyze my poetry and songs when they wish to analyze my intentions. :)

Reminds me of the great Irish poet John Montague. In the "The Slow Dance", he describes primordial man dancing ecstatically within the elements of the earth -thundering, quaking, fire and rain, culminating in the words: "No one was meant to watch, least of all himself."

To me, this instantly projects the opposite possibility: Everyone is meant to watch, most of all ourselves. If this is our future, to 'get to know each other better', then I want to live openly and honestly in order to experience the 'sharing' of that ecstatic dance of life. :)

*Teleology represents "belief before proof"