Raw Data Now

Recently, I watched two interesting lectures by Tim Berners-Lee, recorded at TED in 2009 and 2010. In the first lecture, Tim called for "raw data now", asked the people to put their data on the web, any type of data (government data, scientific data, community data) to be used for other people. About this lecture, from TED: "20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together."



In the second lecture, entitled The year open data went worldwide, he showed a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up. About this lecture, from TED: "At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for "raw data now" - for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up."



Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He leads the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which maintains standards for the Web and continues to refine its design. Recently he has envisioned a "Semantic Web" - an evolved version of the same system that recognizes the meaning of the information it carries. He is also a senior researcher at MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab.