I would love to hear from anyone who knows of data sets that may help. I am
also, like you, curious to hear any other civic use cases for the use of this
technology.
====================
Really, Sands, you Librarians are taking all the fun out of world domination :-)
First, you could use the Library of Congress Linked Data Service
(http://id.loc.gov/). Sadly, that takes all the fun out of wheel reinvention
too.
Second, and this is a bit counter-intuitive, you could consult the coding
systens used in the CIA World Factbook
(https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/) or UN-LOCODES
(http://www.unece.org/cefact/codesfortrade/codes_index.html). The
counter-intuitive part is: of course the CIA and the UN are "pushing adjendas",
just not the adjendas you think. They have no use for "virtual" worlds, one is
complicated enough.
Third, if you like, the IANA Root Zone can be used
(http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db), although you will find out that the
counter-intuitive restraints of the CIA and the UN are a good thing after all.
Last, the web is good for wildly inflationary greedy matches. That is not so
good for a Librarian's career. If you want to do it yourself, stay safe: c.f.
http://www.rustprivacy.org/2012/roadmap/olympics/
--Gannon
====================
- Sands Fish
- Senior Software Engineer / Data Scientist
- MIT Libraries
- [email protected]
________________________________
From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Alvaro
Graves [[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:03 AM
To: Linked Data community
Subject: Civic apps and Linked Data
Hello everyone,
A few days ago I attended ABRELATAM'13 an unconference focused on Open Data in
Latin America. I proposed a session about Open Data + Linked Data to discuss
how semantics and LOD in general can help government and civi organizations. I
want to share the main ideas that emerged from the conversation:
- SW/LOD sounds really cool and the direction where thing should move.
- However there are many technical aspects that remain unsolved
- Since for many people having a relatively good solution using CSV, JSON, etc.
is easier, they don't want to use SW/LOD because it is an overkill and too
complicated.
So my question is: Why we don't see lots of civic apps using Linked Data? Where
are the SW activists? Why we haven't been able to demonstrate to the hacker
community the benefits of using semantic technologies? Is it because they are
hard to use? They don't scale well in many cases (as a googled pointed out)?
Are we too busy working in academia/businesses?
I know very few civic apps using semantic technologies and I don't think I have
seen anyone that has made real impact in any country. I would love if you can
prove me wrong and if we can discuss how can we involve more activists and
hackers into the SW/LOD community.
Alvaro Graves-Fuenzalida
Web: http://graves.cl - Twitter: @alvarograves
