Lost in Celebration
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The Celebration is the 25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web. What got ignored was these two recommendations for WWW open data by UK's Digital Champion:
@unknownuser said:
open data has huge power but needs to move from technologists to mainstream
the uk cannot rest on its digital laurels. we must equip the private, public and not for profit sector with the skills to handle technology better
I am sure this is Britspeak for "Release the stranglehold on WWW development". By following up I feel like one of those British who voted Churchill out of office after VE day. But please consider:
The first makes sense because the majority of data belongs to the general public with more being produced every day. Many would be grateful if more non-creative tasks were automated. There's eBanking; why not eBuilding for example? In eBanking banks provide the data and options; technologists provide the automation. Those in the building industry could also provide their own data and options if there was the means to activate them on WWW; when this happens whole new fields open for the enthusiastic app makers (cf. the plug-in people here). But it means practitioners and technologists need to joint venture to set this up and I see no discussion let alone recognition of that.
This web page (screenshot) working as an activator is a response to her second recommendation. Plain text words are automatically made into hyperlinks when the file is uploaded. The skill is in reorganising processes to allow technology to help automate them (just like Banks did with ATMs).
Re-organisation needs to be object oriented to marry with www automating code and this naturally leads onto greater popularity and demand for 3D models (the main reason I experimented with Sketchup and joined Sketchucation many years ago). But right now the WWW Consortium does not seem to want to acknowledge re-organisation as a way to determine meaning, favouring this approach:
initiated 12+ years ago.
Ironically it was the 25th Anniversary that made me think about these things and I am interested to hear what others also think about it. For example, isn't "Web for all" like offering Sketchup Make for free but to use it you have first to be highly proficient with Ruby?
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