Linked Data

Bear with me, I know Tim Berners-Lee should probably stick to writing code and thinking up ideas rather than public speaking. BUT, behind that spastic trying to say it all at once geeky facade, he is scratching at an incredible concept; linked data. Giving open access to data collected by various organizations for the sole purpose of cross reference. Tim is right, linking data gives it context, purpose and makes it accessible and actionable. Linking data makes apparent the relationships we are humans are hard wired to look for. The beautiful part about linked data, if you have ever taken a statistics course, is that just because these factors are correlated does not imply that one causes the other, but with enough information with enough data and enough variables we can start to imply causation. Just google "Framingham Heart Study" they found some super interesting correlations and made some awesome visualizations to go with it. Visualizations are for stupid people like me, it gives you a whole new context of the relationship of two (or more) variables.

This has incredible implications for the vast silos of data our government and others have penned up in the filing cabinets of the world. Berners-lee repeatedly mentions enterprise data but i am doubtful they will be as inviting to give up their data which they probably consider proprietary and at the least, trade secret. But initially i see the governments of the world opening and linking their data for the inquisitive minds of the world to start creating relationships such as severe weather maps and home remodeling data, traffic maps mashed up with pedestrian accident incidents, socio economic data and child abuse incidences, anything because as we look at it we will find interesting and non obvious conclusions.

Berners-Less mentions the Hans Rosling TEDtalk; here it is.


a bunch of non obvious findings. Beautiful.

I am a big believer in the visualization of data because two lines intersecting, circle gravitating toward or away from each other mean a lot more to us as humans, visually, mentally, spatially, cognitively, than a correlation coefficient (.35, .75, 1, 0, doesn't really mean $#!^ to people who have less experience working with the numbers than number crunchers.

all of this to say, i look forward to the future of data online, i look forward to the web of relationships that will spring from our new human initiative to link every piece of human knowledge into some form of relationship how ever finite or infinite.

if you have time watch the videos, in the words of a previous post "it's important to F@(k with smart people"...