Web 2.0-Pt2: Data is the Intel Inside

Intel's take on importance of data

The world wide web today is a collection of staggering amounts of data increasing exponentially everyday. Representing this data in a useful format, and making it available to users on demand is a challenge that needs to be accepted and organized by people and organizations alike.

There are different ways in which user data can be represented but privacy policies, copyright infringements and ownership rights must be closely monitored. Chaos may result in case of copyrighted material being distributed on the Internet without proper authorization or quoting. Data can be educational, informative, entertaining, interactive or even personal data. The way it is shared should be acknowledged by the creators of the data, and the benefits of the data published should be reaped by companies hosting the data services.

RSS is an application that manages representation of data in an elegant way and promotes responsible use and sharing of data. The simple mechanism of choosing to share one's data and allowing other users to further promote the data is an excellent way to manage ownership right issues. Taking the example of search engines Google stores data of websites and returns them according to user bases searchers, keyword analysis, page ranking and crawlers. Therefore this depicts clearly intelligent management of data

http://www.kintek.com.au/web-design-brisbane/google-analytics-case-study-data-is-the-next-intel-inside/

"Intel inside"  the phrase is so popular that every computer with such a sign clearly shows the technology backing the processes of any user's computer. Similarly the data that is being stored or published in the on-line world forms the intel of the data world we now use as the internet. Internet is a collection of data organized by search engines, and with the evolution of internet and increasing amounts of data, data management solutions, accurate representation, location based search results, will all prove beneficial in utilizing the data for personal and commercial purposes. Data representation needs to evolve into application in order to utilize the benefit of internet responsibly. This is my comprehension of the phrase data is the new Intel inside.  Data not managed or not properly organized would yield something as depicted below for a common user.



Image: Google Images

Web 2.0-Pt1: Harnessing collective intelligence

Image retrieved from: google image search

Web 2.0 applications and platforms harness the power of collective intelligence. In simple terms collective intelligence in the the social networking scale depicts the expression of opinions, standards, or discussion based on experiences, study, knowledge or simply intelligence of a group of people. To my understanding this is what collective intelligence would mean in simplest of terms. Collective intelligence may be utilized in many forms, however the purpose for which this intelligence may be used will be the focus of my discussion here. According to Tim O Reilly and John Battelle (2009) "Collective intelligence applications depend on managing, understanding, and responding to massive amounts of user-generated data in real time" therefore this gives a brief insight about the feasibility of collective intelligence. http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194

An excellent application for bringing about a positive change of this collective intelligence would be utilization of blogs for philanthropy. Kiva utilizes this initiative by raising funds through peer to peer charities. An american not-for-profit organization also tapped into this potential and started a trend of international peer-peer lending phenomenon. This helped raise awareness of helping fellow people around the world. Zidisha also facilitates direct communication between borrowers and lenders to establish a sense of security and belonging between people of the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0#Web_2.0_and_philanthropy

Collective intelligence not only forms the essence of blogs, social networks or any other web 2.0 platforms, but forms the source of technologies such as search engines and how they churn out results to everyday users. Crawlers used by search engines are used by search engines to work with key words and establish page ranking systems.The collective intelligence of keywords, database systems, web development methods, HTML coding, crawler design and page ranking methodologies together form the "collective intelligence of search engines" that give the results most appropriate to what users are looking for. These form the "neural networks of search engines" http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/9780596529321/chapter/ch04.pdf


Certain legal and ethical issues may be raised when collective intelligence platforms are utilized. Legal issues include illegal transfer of funds, tracking of funds, returns, and economical discrepancies. Not-for-profit organizations may be set up by scammers to cheat people out of their money, and if relevant security measures are not in place, this has a chance of collapsing. These are the some of the legal and ethical issues that may be raised by harnessing the power of collective intelligence for philanthropy purposes. However with appropriate collaboration with governments, banks, and security measures in place, this initiative may bring about a positive impact in today's hi-tech society.

With increase in security measures, education, increase in use of internet, cheaper options to get connected to the internet and the web revolution accepting web 2.0 platforms, bringing about a positive change in the world through collective intelligence would serve the true purpose of advances in technology. This would mainly include betterment of humanity and bringing about positive change in society.