WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 Time flies. 00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:04.000 It's actually almost 20 years ago 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.000 when I wanted to reframe the way we use information, 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.000 the way we work together: I invented the World Wide Web. 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Now, 20 years on, at TED, 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:18.000 I want to ask your help in a new reframing. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:23.000 So going back to 1989, 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:26.000 I wrote a memo suggesting the global hypertext system. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:29.000 Nobody really did anything with it, pretty much. 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:33.000 But 18 months later -- this is how innovation happens -- 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:37.000 18 months later, my boss said I could do it on the side, 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:39.000 as a sort of a play project, 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:41.000 kick the tires of a new computer we'd got. 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:44.000 And so he gave me the time to code it up. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:49.000 So I basically roughed out what HTML should look like: 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:52.000 hypertext protocol, HTTP; 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:55.000 the idea of URLs, these names for things 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:57.000 which started with HTTP. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.000 I wrote the code and put it out there. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:01.000 Why did I do it? 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:03.000 Well, it was basically frustration. 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:07.000 I was frustrated -- I was working as a software engineer 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:09.000 in this huge, very exciting lab, 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:11.000 lots of people coming from all over the world. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:14.000 They brought all sorts of different computers with them. 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.000 They had all sorts of different data formats, 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:19.000 all sorts, all kinds of documentation systems. 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:22.000 So that, in all that diversity, 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:24.000 if I wanted to figure out how to build something 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.000 out of a bit of this and a bit of this, 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:30.000 everything I looked into, I had to connect to some new machine, 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.000 I had to learn to run some new program, 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:37.000 I would find the information I wanted in some new data format. 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:39.000 And these were all incompatible. 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:41.000 It was just very frustrating. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:43.000 The frustration was all this unlocked potential. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:46.000 In fact, on all these discs there were documents. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:49.000 So if you just imagined them all 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:54.000 being part of some big, virtual documentation system in the sky, 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:56.000 say on the Internet, 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:58.000 then life would be so much easier. 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Well, once you've had an idea like that it kind of gets under your skin 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:04.000 and even if people don't read your memo -- 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.000 actually he did, it was found after he died, his copy. 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:10.000 He had written, "Vague, but exciting," in pencil, in the corner. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:12.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:16.000 But in general it was difficult -- it was really difficult to explain 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:18.000 what the web was like. 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:20.000 It's difficult to explain to people now that it was difficult then. 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:23.000 But then -- OK, when TED started, there was no web 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:26.000 so things like "click" didn't have the same meaning. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:28.000 I can show somebody a piece of hypertext, 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:30.000 a page which has got links, 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:34.000 and we click on the link and bing -- there'll be another hypertext page. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.000 Not impressive. 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:39.000 You know, we've seen that -- we've got things on hypertext on CD-ROMs. 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:42.000 What was difficult was to get them to imagine: 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:46.000 so, imagine that that link could have gone 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:48.000 to virtually any document you could imagine. 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:53.000 Alright, that is the leap that was very difficult for people to make. 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:55.000 Well, some people did. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:58.000 So yeah, it was difficult to explain, but there was a grassroots movement. 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:03.000 And that is what has made it most fun. 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:05.000 That has been the most exciting thing, 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:07.000 not the technology, not the things people have done with it, 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:09.000 but actually the community, the spirit of all these people 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.000 getting together, sending the emails. 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:13.000 That's what it was like then. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:16.000 Do you know what? It's funny, but right now it's kind of like that again. 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:18.000 I asked everybody, more or less, to put their documents -- 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:21.000 I said, "Could you put your documents on this web thing?" 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:24.000 And you did. 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:25.000 Thanks. 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:27.000 It's been a blast, hasn't it? 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000 I mean, it has been quite interesting 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.000 because we've found out that the things that happen with the web 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:33.000 really sort of blow us away. 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.000 They're much more than we'd originally imagined 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:37.000 when we put together the little, initial website 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.000 that we started off with. 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:42.000 Now, I want you to put your data on the web. 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:46.000 Turns out that there is still huge unlocked potential. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:48.000 There is still a huge frustration 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:52.000 that people have because we haven't got data on the web as data. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000 What do you mean, "data"? What's the difference -- documents, data? 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.000 Well, documents you read, OK? 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:00.000 More or less, you read them, you can follow links from them, and that's it. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:02.000 Data -- you can do all kinds of stuff with a computer. 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:08.000 Who was here or has otherwise seen Hans Rosling's talk? 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:12.000 One of the great -- yes a lot of people have seen it -- 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:14.000 one of the great TED Talks. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:16.000 Hans put up this presentation 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:21.000 in which he showed, for various different countries, in various different colors -- 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:24.000 he showed income levels on one axis 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.000 and he showed infant mortality, and he shot this thing animated through time. 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:31.000 So, he'd taken this data and made a presentation 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:34.000 which just shattered a lot of myths that people had 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:38.000 about the economics in the developing world. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:40.000 He put up a slide a little bit like this. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.000 It had underground all the data 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:45.000 OK, data is brown and boxy and boring, 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:47.000 and that's how we think of it, isn't it? 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:50.000 Because data you can't naturally use by itself 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:54.000 But in fact, data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000 and it happens because somebody takes that data and does something with it. 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.000 In this case, Hans had put the data together 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:04.000 he had found from all kinds of United Nations websites and things. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:06.000 He had put it together, 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:09.000 combined it into something more interesting than the original pieces 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:14.000 and then he'd put it into this software, 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:16.000 which I think his son developed, originally, 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:19.000 and produces this wonderful presentation. 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:21.000 And Hans made a point 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:25.000 of saying, "Look, it's really important to have a lot of data." 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:28.000 And I was happy to see that at the party last night 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:32.000 that he was still saying, very forcibly, "It's really important to have a lot of data." NOTE Paragraph 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:34.000 So I want us now to think about 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:38.000 not just two pieces of data being connected, or six like he did, 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:43.000 but I want to think about a world where everybody has put data on the web 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.000 and so virtually everything you can imagine is on the web 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:47.000 and then calling that linked data. 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:49.000 The technology is linked data, and it's extremely simple. 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:53.000 If you want to put something on the web there are three rules: 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:56.000 first thing is that those HTTP names -- 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:58.000 those things that start with "http:" -- 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:02.000 we're using them not just for documents now, 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:04.000 we're using them for things that the documents are about. 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:06.000 We're using them for people, we're using them for places, 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:10.000 we're using them for your products, we're using them for events. 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:14.000 All kinds of conceptual things, they have names now that start with HTTP. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:19.000 Second rule, if I take one of these HTTP names and I look it up 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:21.000 and I do the web thing with it and I fetch the data 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:23.000 using the HTTP protocol from the web, 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:26.000 I will get back some data in a standard format 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:31.000 which is kind of useful data that somebody might like to know 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:33.000 about that thing, about that event. 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Who's at the event? Whatever it is about that person, 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:37.000 where they were born, things like that. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:39.000 So the second rule is I get important information back. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:43.000 Third rule is that when I get back that information 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.000 it's not just got somebody's height and weight and when they were born, 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:48.000 it's got relationships. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:50.000 Data is relationships. 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:52.000 Interestingly, data is relationships. 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:56.000 This person was born in Berlin; Berlin is in Germany. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:59.000 And when it has relationships, whenever it expresses a relationship 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:02.000 then the other thing that it's related to 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:06.000 is given one of those names that starts HTTP. 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:08.000 So, I can go ahead and look that thing up. 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:11.000 So I look up a person -- I can look up then the city where they were born; then 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:14.000 I can look up the region it's in, and the town it's in, 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.000 and the population of it, and so on. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:19.000 So I can browse this stuff. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:21.000 So that's it, really. 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:23.000 That is linked data. 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:26.000 I wrote an article entitled "Linked Data" a couple of years ago 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:30.000 and soon after that, things started to happen. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:34.000 The idea of linked data is that we get lots and lots and lots 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:36.000 of these boxes that Hans had, 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:38.000 and we get lots and lots and lots of things sprouting. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:41.000 It's not just a whole lot of other plants. 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:43.000 It's not just a root supplying a plant, 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.000 but for each of those plants, whatever it is -- 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:49.000 a presentation, an analysis, somebody's looking for patterns in the data -- 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:52.000 they get to look at all the data 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:54.000 and they get it connected together, 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:56.000 and the really important thing about data 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:58.000 is the more things you have to connect together, the more powerful it is. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.000 So, linked data. 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:02.000 The meme went out there. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:06.000 And, pretty soon Chris Bizer at the Freie Universitat in Berlin 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.000 who was one of the first people to put interesting things up, 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:10.000 he noticed that Wikipedia -- 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:13.000 you know Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.000 with lots and lots of interesting documents in it. 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:19.000 Well, in those documents, there are little squares, little boxes. 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:22.000 And in most information boxes, there's data. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:26.000 So he wrote a program to take the data, extract it from Wikipedia, 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:28.000 and put it into a blob of linked data 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:31.000 on the web, which he called dbpedia. 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:35.000 Dbpedia is represented by the blue blob in the middle of this slide 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:37.000 and if you actually go and look up Berlin, 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:39.000 you'll find that there are other blobs of data 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:42.000 which also have stuff about Berlin, and they're linked together. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:45.000 So if you pull the data from dbpedia about Berlin, 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:47.000 you'll end up pulling up these other things as well. 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:50.000 And the exciting thing is it's starting to grow. 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:52.000 This is just the grassroots stuff again, OK? NOTE Paragraph 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:55.000 Let's think about data for a bit. 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:58.000 Data comes in fact in lots and lots of different forms. 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:01.000 Think of the diversity of the web. It's a really important thing 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:04.000 that the web allows you to put all kinds of data up there. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.000 So it is with data. I could talk about all kinds of data. 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:11.000 We could talk about government data, enterprise data is really important, 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:14.000 there's scientific data, there's personal data, 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:16.000 there's weather data, there's data about events, 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:20.000 there's data about talks, and there's news and there's all kinds of stuff. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:23.000 I'm just going to mention a few of them 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:25.000 so that you get the idea of the diversity of it, 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:29.000 so that you also see how much unlocked potential. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:31.000 Let's start with government data. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:33.000 Barack Obama said in a speech, 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:38.000 that he -- American government data would be available on the Internet 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:40.000 in accessible formats. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:42.000 And I hope that they will put it up as linked data. 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:44.000 That's important. Why is it important? 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:47.000 Not just for transparency, yeah transparency in government is important, 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:50.000 but that data -- this is the data from all the government departments 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:55.000 Think about how much of that data is about how life is lived in America. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.000 It's actual useful. It's got value. 00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:59.000 I can use it in my company. 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:01.000 I could use it as a kid to do my homework. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:04.000 So we're talking about making the place, making the world run better 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:06.000 by making this data available. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:10.000 In fact if you're responsible -- if you know about some data 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:12.000 in a government department, often you find that 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:15.000 these people, they're very tempted to keep it -- 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:18.000 Hans calls it database hugging. 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.000 You hug your database, you don't want to let it go 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:22.000 until you've made a beautiful website for it. 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:24.000 Well, I'd like to suggest that rather -- 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:26.000 yes, make a beautiful website, 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.000 who am I to say don't make a beautiful website? 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:31.000 Make a beautiful website, but first 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:34.000 give us the unadulterated data, 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:36.000 we want the data. 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.000 We want unadulterated data. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:41.000 OK, we have to ask for raw data now. 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:43.000 And I'm going to ask you to practice that, OK? 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:44.000 Can you say "raw"? NOTE Paragraph 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:45.000 Audience: Raw. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:46.000 Tim Berners-Lee: Can you say "data"? NOTE Paragraph 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:47.000 Audience: Data. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:48.000 TBL: Can you say "now"? NOTE Paragraph 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:49.000 Audience: Now! NOTE Paragraph 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.000 TBL: Alright, "raw data now"! NOTE Paragraph 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.000 Audience: Raw data now! NOTE Paragraph 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:57.000 Practice that. It's important because you have no idea the number of excuses 00:10:57.000 --> 00:10:59.000 people come up with to hang onto their data 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:03.000 and not give it to you, even though you've paid for it as a taxpayer. 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:05.000 And it's not just America. It's all over the world. 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:08.000 And it's not just governments, of course -- it's enterprises as well. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:11.000 So I'm just going to mention a few other thoughts on data. 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:16.000 Here we are at TED, and all the time we are very conscious 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:21.000 of the huge challenges that human society has right now -- 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:24.000 curing cancer, understanding the brain for Alzheimer's, 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:27.000 understanding the economy to make it a little bit more stable, 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:29.000 understanding how the world works. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:31.000 The people who are going to solve those -- the scientists -- 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:33.000 they have half-formed ideas in their head, 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:36.000 they try to communicate those over the web. 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:39.000 But a lot of the state of knowledge of the human race at the moment 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:42.000 is on databases, often sitting in their computers, 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:45.000 and actually, currently not shared. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.000 In fact, I'll just go into one area -- 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.000 if you're looking at Alzheimer's, for example, 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:53.000 drug discovery -- there is a whole lot of linked data which is just coming out 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:55.000 because scientists in that field realize 00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:58.000 this is a great way of getting out of those silos, 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:02.000 because they had their genomics data in one database 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:05.000 in one building, and they had their protein data in another. 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:08.000 Now, they are sticking it onto -- linked data -- 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:11.000 and now they can ask the sort of question, that you probably wouldn't ask, 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.000 I wouldn't ask -- they would. 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:15.000 What proteins are involved in signal transduction 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:17.000 and also related to pyramidal neurons? 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:20.000 Well, you take that mouthful and you put it into Google. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:23.000 Of course, there's no page on the web which has answered that question 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:25.000 because nobody has asked that question before. 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:27.000 You get 223,000 hits -- 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:29.000 no results you can use. 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:32.000 You ask the linked data -- which they've now put together -- 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:36.000 32 hits, each of which is a protein which has those properties 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:38.000 and you can look at. 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:41.000 The power of being able to ask those questions, as a scientist -- 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:43.000 questions which actually bridge across different disciplines -- 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:46.000 is really a complete sea change. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:48.000 It's very very important. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:50.000 Scientists are totally stymied at the moment -- 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:55.000 the power of the data that other scientists have collected is locked up 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:58.000 and we need to get it unlocked so we can tackle those huge problems. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:02.000 Now if I go on like this, you'll think that all the data comes from huge institutions 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:05.000 and has nothing to do with you. 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:07.000 But, that's not true. 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:09.000 In fact, data is about our lives. 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:12.000 You just -- you log on to your social networking site, 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:14.000 your favorite one, you say, "This is my friend." 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:17.000 Bing! Relationship. Data. 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:20.000 You say, "This photograph, it's about -- it depicts this person. " 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:23.000 Bing! That's data. Data, data, data. 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:25.000 Every time you do things on the social networking site, 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:29.000 the social networking site is taking data and using it -- re-purposing it -- 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:33.000 and using it to make other people's lives more interesting on the site. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:35.000 But, when you go to another linked data site -- 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:38.000 and let's say this is one about travel, 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:41.000 and you say, "I want to send this photo to all the people in that group," 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:43.000 you can't get over the walls. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.000 The Economist wrote an article about it, and lots of people have blogged about it -- 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:46.000 tremendous frustration. 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:48.000 The way to break down the silos is to get inter-operability 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:50.000 between social networking sites. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:52.000 We need to do that with linked data. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:55.000 One last type of data I'll talk about, maybe it's the most exciting. 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:58.000 Before I came down here, I looked it up on OpenStreetMap 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:00.000 The OpenStreetMap's a map, but it's also a Wiki. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:03.000 Zoom in and that square thing is a theater -- which we're in right now -- 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.000 The Terrace Theater. It didn't have a name on it. 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:07.000 So I could go into edit mode, I could select the theater, 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:12.000 I could add down at the bottom the name, and I could save it back. 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:15.000 And now if you go back to the OpenStreetMap. org, 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:18.000 and you find this place, you will find that The Terrace Theater has got a name. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:20.000 I did that. Me! 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:22.000 I did that to the map. I just did that! 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.000 I put that up on there. Hey, you know what? 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:27.000 If I -- that street map is all about everybody doing their bit 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:30.000 and it creates an incredible resource 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:33.000 because everybody else does theirs. 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:36.000 And that is what linked data is all about. 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:39.000 It's about people doing their bit 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:42.000 to produce a little bit, and it all connecting. 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:45.000 That's how linked data works. 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:49.000 You do your bit. Everybody else does theirs. 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:53.000 You may not have lots of data which you have yourself to put on there 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.000 but you know to demand it. 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:58.000 And we've practiced that. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:02.000 So, linked data -- it's huge. 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:05.000 I've only told you a very small number of things 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:07.000 There are data in every aspect of our lives, 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:10.000 every aspect of work and pleasure, 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:13.000 and it's not just about the number of places where data comes, 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:16.000 it's about connecting it together. 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:19.000 And when you connect data together, you get power 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:22.000 in a way that doesn't happen just with the web, with documents. 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:26.000 You get this really huge power out of it. 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:29.000 So, we're at the stage now 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:33.000 where we have to do this -- the people who think it's a great idea. 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:36.000 And all the people -- and I think there's a lot of people at TED who do things because -- 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:38.000 even though there's not an immediate return on the investment 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:41.000 because it will only really pay off when everybody else has done it -- 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:45.000 they'll do it because they're the sort of person who just does things 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:48.000 which would be good if everybody else did them. 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:50.000 OK, so it's called linked data. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:52.000 I want you to make it. 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:54.000 I want you to demand it. 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:56.000 And I think it's an idea worth spreading. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:57.000 Thanks. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:00.000 (Applause)