Data – Global Challenges

The future of data is a broad topic, which can cover a range of issues: some technical, some regulatory, some social and others philosophical. The web is still a young technology – it has only been twenty years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau invented it at CERN: It will take many decades for us to fully understand its impact on our society. And the pace of change on the Internet, and that which is enabled by the Internet, is speeding up.  Whatever happens, as it continues to develop, we’ll be presented with more opportunities and more challenges.  The web is a fundamentally democratic platform, and it reflects both positive and negative aspects of the offline world. Read more

Popularity: 5% [?]

Data – Options and Possibilities

The beauty of the internet, and therefore by association access to data, is in its unpredictability. The web’s openness means that new innovations appear online every day. Some succeed and others don’t, and successes spawn further innovation. Two years ago, for example, very few people would have predicted the role that Twitter and YouTube played in the Iranian elections. Even so, as we look ahead, some things are clear.  Read more

Popularity: 4% [?]

Data – Proposed Way Forward

If we consider what has been achieved in the past ten years, over the next decade we have the opportunity to give more and more power to users. In the world of ubiquitous and uniform access, intelligent agents and the semantic web, we have the potential to enable even greater shifts in transparency and access to data than previous generations would have ever imagined. However, to achieve this we need to move forward on two key topics that will moderate the impact that can be achieved. Read more

Popularity: 2% [?]

Data – Impacts and Implications

Substantive research has already shown us that access to information has significant impact on quality of life from an economic, social and political perspective in many dimensions. For example, think first of the fishermen who can now identify in advance where they are most likely to get the best price for their catch and so sail straight to the port and thus improve their efficiency and also profitability. Or think of the student who can check online to see where friends a meeting up – and then decide whether to join in knowing who will be around, what the music will be like and, even get information about how to get there. Access to new data is already changing lives – what it will do in the future is pretty much only limited by our imagination. Read more

Popularity: 2% [?]