shimenawa - Latest comments on Open data isn't

In response to: Open data isn't

Samuel Generoux [Visitor] — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:42:24 +0000

I actually think that this is an excellent and highly relevant observation. In terms of Google maps and Google books, we might be looking at different types of things, but the pattern is similar. In terms of access to content, this is really looking more like an issue of degree or maybe type of access. Google is indeed providing more access to material than was previously available, but there are costs and trade-offs. There is certainly no harm in saying and discussing this point. The solution might be to continue to work towards mapping and articulating these types of issues and promoting discussion as a way of understanding how information and culture can be and should be shared in a networked digital environment. In order to make the most informed decisions, libraries, archives, museums and holders of public information need to understand the ramifications of these partnerships and the terms and conditions that come with them.
Additionally, we need to understand what is being provided by Google and the limitations of what is being provided in order for our public institutions to create and adjust their policies, priorities and actions.

I just finished reading Jonathan Zittrain’s Future of the Internet and I think that his book does an amazing job of parsing out a lot of these issues. He uses the term “generative” to refer to the degree of openness in being able to innovate, experiment and hack on content and technology in order to create new things. Services like Google Books allows us to search across vast amounts of content for free and it provides citation, snippet and some full text access for free. A powerful and highly useful service. However, users are quite limited in how they can hack up and riff on this mass of data. It is open to search, open to read (to various degrees according to copyright), but not completely open to do R&D and other experimenting. Google is providing an API platform for others to develop and play with the data, but as Zittrain points out, this openness is contingent. Services and tools built on open APIs can be withdrawn at anytime by the owner of the API (in this case Google).

I think a good perspective on all of this is that it is not an either-or debate. Not completely open or completely locked down. There are and will continue to be degrees of openness, but it is important for libraries, archives and museums to make decisions about how they share content based on an understanding of the networked digital environment and the degrees and types of access.

In response to: Open data isn't

Raymond Yee [Visitor] — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:20:02 +0000

What does Thomas Lord suggest that we who would otherwise use a commercial service like Google maps to do? Not create mashups at all? Create mashups that involve no commercial services? (I'm writing as someone interested in both mashups and helping people make sense of public data.)

In response to: Open data isn't

Paul Courant [Visitor] — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:24:58 +0000

The choice between well-funded, far-seeing, wise, intelligent government and the world that we live in is a false choice. We never had such a government. Neither did ancient Athens.

It has always been the case that private entities (R.H. Polk, for example) have used public data and reused them to provide detailed geographic information to those who were willing to pay for it. Is that better or worse than the example with Google maps? I would argue the old way was less democratic, and less open, although we are still, alas, short of being able to get our news from the brow of the philosopher-monarch.

More generally, if private entities can add value (preferably not by monopolizing something, but by actually adding value) to public data, that's capitalism at its best. Along these lines, I have an entry on my blog (Au Courant at paulcourant.net) that explains why I choose to have an attribution only Creative Commons license on the blog. I may, of course, be wrong about this, but my position derives from the notion that we want date to be used in ways that people value.

Again, the choice is between levels of imperfection, not between the ideal and something less.