Sharkbait's Local Spot

Data.gov is live! Not only is it a top-level decision to provide transparency to this country's widest-reaching institution, but (I believe) it has the power and potential to radically transform how we do business, how we research and who we research with, and what we can accomplish.

Think about it. With more data sets, people across all disciplines will be able to share and apply their data with infinitely wider scope. I wonder how an artist, engineer, biologist, linguist, statistician, economist, teacher, and realtor would approach the Active Mines and Mineral Plants in the US set. Or what thousands of seismologists across the world looking at things from different perspectives can discover about earthquakes.

Also, the effect of this on intellectual property, licensing and rights, open source software, and other things like the Right to Repair Act will be dramatic. This is not only a shift of policy, but one of ideas and information, down to meta levels of how we even think about, look at, and access that information.

How this can't help but phenomenally change society forever is what I'm trying to wrap my head around.