20 anni fa, Tim Berners-Lee inventò il World Wide Web. Ora sta lavorando alla creazione di un web pensato in funzione di dati condivisi e interconessi che potrebbe rappresentare per i numeri ciò che il Web è stato per le parole, le immagini e i video: rendere accessibili i dati riformulando il modo in cui li usiamo.
Berners-Lee cita Hans Rosling che, in un sua presentazione, dice cose che andrebbero scolpite sulla fronte degli Enti pubblici italiani:
“… Often we show the notes and don’t play the music. To play the music we need instruments.
And we need someone who plays. Then the beauty of the music will come out and reach the population…. I regard the professionals of statistical agencies as the much appreciated composers. ……
There is a possibility now to upload data in completely new technologies which are financed outside the money which is going to statistical agencies. There is new money coming in for statistics for developping new technologies. …
… The database hugging in public institutions is hampering innovation. We must find a correct way of enabling the innovators and enterpreneurs to use in a proper and responsible way the databases and to put them up for experimentation. That’s where things will happen. I think if we can solve this in a correct way we will see a very dynamic and interesting development in the future. We have to honour our composers, we need a watermark on the database ….. But it has to go out in the creative environment when new technology and new funding will be made available for it.
And I would summarize like this: That dissemination has to be enlarged to a concept of access. Communication is one part of it. But you have to go beyond that. Every Friday night at 6 o’clock the week’s work of the statistical agency will be updated on the database and it will be free for download in the week and for the creative Web 2.0 community out there. Then things will happen, then things will happen. And we will have to have visualization to go to animation and then we can do what the music industry is and we hope that large parts of the population will play the beautiful music of statistics.
... data collection consumes vast amounts of money and to charge a small fraction doesn't help anyone. Let's have freely available statistical data. ”Rosling queste cose le dice e le dimostra da anni:
E ora il pallino l'ha preso Google e quindi ne vedremo delle belle.
Obama, in uno dei suoi primi atti, ha ordinato a tutte le agenzie governative di mettere tutti i dati online, in formato grezzo e il più possibile disaggregati. Berners-Lee sta lavorando a questa missione per il Governo inglese e, dopo un anno, aggiorna sui progressi dell'Open Data Initiative.
