and more companies, governments, as well as formal and informal organizations, including those led by citizens, owe thier existence to the availability of data, its treatment and its transformation. This, along with a growing demand for transparency to which organizations are adapting, appears to increase the value of data and the processes of search and of making information available. The percieved increase in the value of data corresponds to a parallel increase in its availability, a reduction in the costs and barriers to access, and a greater access to methods and technologies within which to work. A new and very promising situation –apart from the risk of overload, which, personally, I do not believe in very much– which is supported by the Open Data movement and characterized by an openness and abundance unknown to the productive economic models which we are accustomed to. In fact, the goldmine metaphor carries with it at least one risk: that of focusing too much attention on the raw material, asigning it a value in its own right [something which can be difficult in times of abundance]. As if the harvesting, possession or wide distribution in themselves were sufficient. “Data on its own is impotent,” Guy Laurence, CEO of Vodafone UK, says rightly in the first edition of Think Quarterly, the Google magazine [The Data Issue, March 2011]. The truth is that data more often seems to be more similar to a commodity than a precious metal. Without a timely transformation, and in the absence of occasions or interfaces that make it possible to use it, data has little value.
Visual Explorations. On-line investigations for understanding society.
CIUCCARELLI, PAOLO
2012-01-01
Abstract
and more companies, governments, as well as formal and informal organizations, including those led by citizens, owe thier existence to the availability of data, its treatment and its transformation. This, along with a growing demand for transparency to which organizations are adapting, appears to increase the value of data and the processes of search and of making information available. The percieved increase in the value of data corresponds to a parallel increase in its availability, a reduction in the costs and barriers to access, and a greater access to methods and technologies within which to work. A new and very promising situation –apart from the risk of overload, which, personally, I do not believe in very much– which is supported by the Open Data movement and characterized by an openness and abundance unknown to the productive economic models which we are accustomed to. In fact, the goldmine metaphor carries with it at least one risk: that of focusing too much attention on the raw material, asigning it a value in its own right [something which can be difficult in times of abundance]. As if the harvesting, possession or wide distribution in themselves were sufficient. “Data on its own is impotent,” Guy Laurence, CEO of Vodafone UK, says rightly in the first edition of Think Quarterly, the Google magazine [The Data Issue, March 2011]. The truth is that data more often seems to be more similar to a commodity than a precious metal. Without a timely transformation, and in the absence of occasions or interfaces that make it possible to use it, data has little value.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
