Unlocking the Potential (of data)

When we talk about the need to share biological data and outline the obstacles in the way we talk about too file formats, too much fragmentation, lack of standards, lack of tools, etc...

In doing so, we are just rephrasing the exact same issues that led to the creation of the internet - the ultimate tool for communication and information sharing.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (i.e. URLs and HTML) exactly to overcome these problems and frustrations - as he says in this Ted Talk to "Unlock all this Potential".

See the beginning of this Ted.com "Ideas worth spreading" video for his thinking in developing the WWW 20 years ago:

Tim Berners-Lee on the next Web Tim Berners-Lee on TED.com

"Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He leads the World Wide Web Consortium, overseeing the Web's standards and development."

Now he's 'reframing' the world again by focusing on raw data and what can be done when it is made available on the internet.

Now he is calling for everyone to "put their data on the web". He argues that documents you read, data you can do all kinds of stuff with! As he says, data drives a huge amount of what goes on in our lives.

The technology underlying this new revolution in data on the web is the concept of "linked data" - including the relationships between data points (the design principles of this standard/technology are here).

This next Ted.com video gives examples of what can be done - including volunteer creation of maps following the earthquake in Haiti.

This is a glimpse of what will be done by the "Open Data Movement" in the future:

Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide