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Sir Tim Berners-Lee passionately explains Linked Data

I’m an idiot. Not a fool, exactly, but I get these bees in my bonnet about one thing or another, usually something absolutely ridiculous, and I go on and on and on about them. To be honest, these things, whatever they are – be they dogs or science or bears or London – and I can’t be quieted; I will go off on one.

I was just checking out one of the Amnesty International blogs, about data sharing, and discovered that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, he of “I invented the World Wide Web” fame, is much the same. He too goes on and on and on about things that make him excitable. Except in this case, rather than dogs and their boundless enthusiasm, it is the wonder of the Web and its ability to help us understand the world. Specifically on this blog entry, he’s giving a TED talk, his imagination completely overwhelmed by the wonder of ‘Linked Data’.

A bit of back-story: Amnesty is really keen on governments releasing statistical information about their departments as raw data. This data can then be perused by citizens and NGOs like, well, Amnesty International. Open government and human rights tend to go together like peas in a pod.

Both the US and UK governments now share raw data online. American government data can be found at data.gov ; British government raw data is at  data.gov.uk respectively. That’s exciting to Amnesty, and really good news to us all.

Information is Beautiful explains the American political divide using data-derived imagery

What’s even more impressive is how all this data can be represented graphically. Numbers can be crunched into highly revealing images, which can then form part of interwoven, interlinked, easily understood, graphical narratives. For just how impressive this can be, just check out the charts on Information is Beautiful. Your socks should really be knocked off.

No wonder Sir Tim is so excited in the video. His voice cracks and squeaks with nervousness and dog-like enthusiasm about the raw data, getting the crowd to chant for “Raw!” “Data!” “Now!” In fact, if dogs could talk and they could talk about Linked Data, they’d get that excited, hands down. Their tails would be wagging away and their ears would prick up and they’d groan and say “Raw data! Raw data!” and start jumping up and down and … oops. I did it again.

Anyway, enjoy the video and don’t forget to demand the data.