DIG 245: GROUP 3(Reviewers), POST 1

We thought that Tim Berners-Lee’s “The Next Web” had a very interesting point about how the spirit of the internet is one of community. He also makes a compelling point about how “linked data” is much more powerful than independent scattered data. Berners-Lee makes it quite clear that he is calling for action. He wants the everyday internet user to stand up and demand access to “data.” He recognizes the importance of data in our society which increasingly depends on it, and this is why he wants the public to have direct access to unadulterated information. This would allow people to interpret data for themselves, rather than seeing it in the way that the major corporations who collect it want the data to be seen.

With open collaboration on data, extraordinary things could happen, just like they did with collaboration on the web. Berners-Lee’s example of Alzheimer’s disease also offers a good case about how available data can make the world a better place. When making his talk, it seemed like Berners-Lee’s main motivation was being able to make a virtual place where all information about one subject can be collectively found at once, mostly information from academics and researchers. This is also his targeted audience, but in his talk he also speaks out to most everyone, after all most everyone used the internet then and now is no different – now is an even more internet infested time.

Data Culture: Group 1, Post 1

We found that Rosenberg’s “Data before the Fact” was quite similar to “Information: Notes Toward a Critical History”, which we read for last week.  It discussed the history of the meaning of the word “data” and how it has changed over time.  One interesting part of this reading was on page 18 when Rosenberg discussed the word data compared to the words “fact” and “evidence.”  These are words that we may use similarly in the English language, however they have significantly different meanings.  We have one question from this reading as well: What does Rosenberg mean when he says “in the eighteenth century, ‘data’ was still a term of art”?

In the article “A Brief History of Databases”, Fortune discusses the industrialization of computers and data storage.  As new things are being invented, more questions come up.  New data is arising, but new problems to arise such as how to navigate this data and where to store it, etc.  There is a constant string of innovation from data.

We were also intrigued by the idea of the panopticon and the super-panopticon.  The panopticon deals with a single entity being watched over whereas the super-panopticon discusses this idea but on a much larger scale – we would describe it as a never ending machinery system of surveillance.  Poster compares the data of each individual user to that person being in jail.  This is a shocking yet realistic comparison that we all agreed we had never thought of before.  We did not really understand the part where Poster writes “For although surveillance rests on the individual, its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom… and laterally… this network holds the whole together and traverses it in its entirety with effects of power that derive from one another…”  What is the network of relations from top to bottom and laterally?