Open Data
Everybody seems to love Open Data.
Some took the leap of faith and started to speak about
Open Government. But would we approve of the ways of the
government of North Korea if they decided to publish their train
timetables in GTFS format? [1]
What if many local and national governments were hiding their usual
and rather opaque decision-making ways behind a well-sounding
adherence to Open Data? [2]
Take Barack Obama: Yes, he made a lot of government data available
on Data.gov.
But would he have waged total war on Julian Assange and Edward
Snowden had he been really interested in transparency?
There's more: who is taking advantage of Open Data? They are open
to everybody.
Sure. But who has the tools to use them? Aren't companies much
better equipped to take advantage of Open Data than the average
citizen is? Is this not yet another privatisation of a public good
for private profit? [3]
[1]
McHugh, Bibiana.
Pioneering Open Data Standards: The GTFS Story.
[2]
Morozov, Evgeny.
To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological
Solutionism, Chapter 3.
[3]
Slee, Tom.
What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy,
Chapters 7 and 8.
