The Role of Taxonomy and Ontology in Semantic Layers - Heather Hedden.pdf
Open + Internet of Things
1. OPEN + THE
INTERNET OF THINGS
PRESENTED BY
Dr Laura James
CEO, Open Knowledge Foundation
2. What is open data?
Open Data can be freely used, reused,
and redistributed, by anyone,
anywhere, for any purpose
(we also work with public domain cultural works content - as well as data)
3. Why open?
So you can:
componentise
remix
reshare
Giving you:
new insights
better data
innovation
4. What is open knowledge?
Open Knowledge is what Open Data
becomes when it is made useful accessible, understandable,
meaningful, and able to
help someone solve a real problem
6. all kinds of knowledge
• any kind of knowledge can be open
• any format: spreadsheets, databases, pictures,
words…
• any field: transport, science, products, education,
sustainability, maps, legislation, libraries, economics,
culture, development, business, design, finance …
7. all kinds of people
in all kinds of organisations
• open data can be published by anyone: government, public sector
bodies, researchers, corporations, universities, NGOs, startups, charities,
community groups, individuals….
• open data can be used by anyone: government, public sector bodies,
researchers, corporations, universities, NGOs, startups, charities,
community groups, individuals….
• all kinds of people can get involved with the open knowledge
movement: as a campaigner, coder, writer, donor, trainer, tweeter, meetup
organiser, data wrangler, ambassador, analyst, researcher, manager…
8. The Open Knowledge Foundation
• We build tools to make working with information easier
• We help people learn the data skills they need
• We connect and support individuals and organisations and
projects to create collaborations and make things happen
9. we are makers
Creating the open infrastructure and tooling
to power and support the open ecosystem and
innovation
15. we bring people together
& advise & campaign & collaborate
Meetups and workshops – online and offline
Key convening events such as the first international Open
Government Data Camp in 2010
Direct technical and legal contributions to a large number of
projects and initiatives in dozens of countries around the
world, shaping essential policies at the World Bank, US, UK,
French, Finnish, Brazilian governments
21. So…
We are in the midst of an open data revolution
• But it’s not a magic bullet
• We need: tools, communities, skills
• We need access to data!
• It’s going to be disruptive
22. The data revolution
The 21st century as information age
• Data is everywhere
• Data is powerful (especially when it’s shared openly!)
• But it shouldn’t all be open data
23. Data about me
• A lot of the data which could help me improve my life is data
about me
• This data might be gathered directly by me or harvested by
corporations from what I do online, or assembled by public
sector services I use, or voluntarily contributed to scientific and
other research studies, or…
• There’s a lot of it. I don’t even know what’s out there
24. My data / our data
Whose information is it anyway?
• Who collects it?
• Who moves it around or stores it?
• Who licenses it?
• Who uses it? And for what?
• Who controls what happens to it?
• Who is the data about?
25. Personal data becoming
open data
• Important datasets that are (or could be) open are created from
personal data via aggregation, anonymisation, etc
• By personal choice
• Through the public record
26. Personal data becoming
open data
• Important datasets that are (or could be) open are created from
personal data via aggregation, anonymisation, etc
• By personal choice
• Through the public record
This is really very
very hard to do
properly
27. Most people are not like you
• Most people are not early adopters
• Other people have different risk profiles
• Design for everyone, not just you
28. Warning: seriously nontrivial!
• Data ownership & data control
• Education & awareness
• Privacy & risk
• Crypto / personal data stores / query APIs not data APIs / ??
• This isn’t an open data debate: it’s a data debate!
29. It’s not about opening
everything
• If it’s definitely a shared good, commons-style data: open it
• If it’s personal information: think very hard
52. On open licensing…
• Is what you’ve got a design, a process, software, data?
• Where in the world are you?
• If there’s no licence it’s not open!
53. Pragmatic not fanatic
• Principles are all very well but you have to ship
• Does it matter if it’s turtles all the way down?
• Revolutions are hard
54. Why open IOT?
• IOT will help us solve the big global problems
• Open gives us choice, freedom, transparency & trust (and these
are things we want when we imagine systems which are
everywhere, affecting everyone, all the time)
• Open scales
• Open is sustainable
55. Conclusion
open means free reuse and resharing by
anyone, anywhere, for any purpose
I’m @LaurieJ / LBJ.org.uk
We’re @OKFN / OKFN.org
Notes de l'éditeur
Key point here is that we’re not restricted to non commercial use
You don’t want to have to consult a lawyer if you’re thinking about using something “open”
Where ever - who ever - whatever organisation you’re in.
It’s all about interoperability - seamlessly sharing and weaving information. The definition guarantees the data or knowledge is interoperable.
And also note it doesn’t stop you from selling it or selling services around it!
This starts to get hard if the data is closed (accessing, licensing, permissions). To weave data together at large scale it’s got to be open.
you’ve got Transport data, you’ve got geodata, but it’s only when you have both that you can know when you need to be at your bus stop.
Coders say: To many eyes, all bugs are shallow. We say: To many eyes, all data problems will get spotted.
And you get more innovation. The best thing that will be done with your data will be thought of by someone else
Both technical and legal aspects of openness
We work on tools, skills, and communities, let’s look at each of those now
OpenSpending, the worlds largest open database of public money transactions, helping people understand where their money goes
The Daily Bread, showing you how your taxes are spent – here you can see if you earn around £54k per year, you are paying £4 a day for education
Labs is a community of developers and data wranglers exploring the frontiers of open data tech and innovation
Here’s a tool showing you that you don’t have to be a PhD-equipped data scientist. Timemapper takes a google spreadsheet – that’s a simple spreadsheet, not even the complexity of Excel – and turns it into an interactive map and timeline. Magic
A formal presence in over 40 countries
School of Data, empowering civil society organisations, journalists and citizens with the skills they need to hold power to account
We create openly shared learning materials too like the open data handbook, *the* reference for the legal, social and tech aspects of open data
Available in many languages
This will be a slow process including institutional change.
There will be new business models, building value out of things that aren’t data.
We need to get better at working with data
Data is going to disrupt economies and business models
Data collection in the home or in public spaces in cities is about lots of people… maybe we don’t even know who it is about
The Census is a key traditional example of an important dataset created from personal information but without a privacy risk.
Individuals may choose to open up their medical records to help sufferers with the same conditions.
Elected officials choose to live in the public eye and necssarily some of their information is part of the public record
The Census folks worked very hard to do this right. And they had very straightforward motivations.
You are an early adopter. Others are not
Some people need privacy more than others. They have abusive spouses, or the press hounding them.
Get a security engineer who can do adversarial thinking. Get an ethnographer.
You don’t need to design for perfect privacy. But you need to do a risk assessment
This is a very hard area and we don’t’ know the answers. We barely know the questions
There are radical new ideas being worked on. Like something which can answer questions where you control what questions can be asked. So not “give me all the power readings for my house for the last year” but “did power usage drop significantly in April?”
What else can be open in the internet of things?
Open source software, meaning open tools.
THe Open Knowledge Foundation does a lot of work with public data - stuff from activity funded by you the taxpayer - and we firmly believe that if you’re building public data tools, they should be open source.
You get choice, freedom, avoid lock-in of proprietary systems.
OPen hardware. So it’s tempting to look at that and think, yeah, we know what that means, it’s arduinos.
So let’s go down the rabbit hole and look at some of the other things which might be open.
So... hardware. Let’s start at the small end of the spectrum
OPen cores - detailed designs of modules of functionality (like processors) which are deployed in field programmable gate arrays, or hard programmed ASICs
What’s often meant by open hardware - circuit designs, board designs, sets of components.
And let’s remember the other bits of openness - are the documents open? Designs are rarely useful without some contextual information.
Just as important - are the docs up to date and relevant for the bit of kit in question?
I imagine a lot of you are software people. Software is modular and that makes life pretty easy. A car is NOT modular. You can’t switch all the bits in and out without having an effect on important features, like what happens in a crash. Those docs are going to be critical.
And let’s remember the other bits of openness - are the documents open? Designs are rarely useful without some contextual information.
Just as important - are the docs up to date and relevant for the bit of kit in question?
I imagine a lot of you are software people. Software is modular and that makes life pretty easy. A car is NOT modular. You can’t switch all the bits in and out without having an effect on important features, like what happens in a crash. Those docs are going to be critical.
So, that was mostly electronics design - what about other kinds of design?
web design
graphic design
open fonts
open product design
open fashion
web design
graphic design
open fonts
open product design
open fashion
Open innovation - these guys design processes to help organisations collaborate to create new innovations, which might be products, processes or systems
Design for reuse and recycling is a really interesting space, and one that can be open, like ikea hackers, who repurpose old Ikea bits into new product designs
And it’s not just THINGS. It’s services too.
collaborative, open methods to help the public design future services and systems. Which themselves can be open.
Cool stuff.
And it’s not just THINGS. It’s services too.
collaborative, open methods to help the public design future services and systems. Which themselves can be open.
Cool stuff.
Well, design is all very well, but ultimately we’re talking about making things and getting them out into the world.
So what does open mean for manufacturing?
Maybe it’s open source software and open hardware combined into manufacturing kit, like 3D printers. Or open designs for moulds and supports for use in manufacturing
Where do the components of something come from? How do individual elements of a product get made, shipped, assembled into a bigger component, shipped, wrapped, and delivered? This is open supply chain data.
and if we’re serious about making things, we’re also testing them. Ethereal is just one example of an open source test tool, in this case a network analyser.
and finally, let’s go down the scale a little. When we talk open hardware - is it open all the way down? There’s intellectual property in many materials, both high tech like new carbon nanostructures, and more traditional things like pharmacuticals or plastics. And so now there are open alternatives starting to appear.
and finally, let’s go down the scale a little. When we talk open hardware - is it open all the way down? There’s intellectual property in many materials, both high tech like new carbon nanostructures, and more traditional things like pharmacuticals or plastics. And so now there are open alternatives starting to appear.
Think about whether you are looking to licence patents or copyright or design rights or whatever. Get a lawyer if you aren’t sure!
So, what problems can the internet of things potentially solve? Distributed healthcare; keeping seniors independent; monitoring extreme weather; maximising productivity of agriculture so we can feed all the people on the planet; enabling new energy systems to reduce climate change. And the solutions to these problems require that we work at scale. Not toys for geeks; this stuff has to be everywhere, for everyone.
So, epic scale internet of things projects, means a lot of kit out there in the world, a lot of data. You don’t this stuff to break; you want it to keep working. You want data preserved long term, not lost in a crash. It’s got to be sustainable in all senses of the word.