TED's Talk Video

I recently watched Tim Berners-Lee's video on the next web.  Tim, credited with inventing the World Wide Web (WWW) about twenty years ago, is recorded giving a presentation to TED about what he envisions the next web to be like.  The primary difference he notes from the current web is that he believes that the next web will be one where data is interchanged freely between users.  In other words, users would simply post their raw data online (at one point, he leads the audience in a "Raw - Data - Now!" chant, which invoked memories of many sub-par political speeches) and other users would be free to query the data in different forms.  He encourages listeners to demand that the data that governments have collected, be accessible to all.

While I applaud this type of innovative thinking, I am not too sure that we want all of our data to be accessible by all.  Recent world events have shown us that detailed information (such as a map) in the wrong hands can give an advantage to those seeking to do harm.  Furthermore, merging of different data points may portray a "digital profile" that might reveal private information. My point is, perhaps not all data should be released for public consumption.  Someone (due to security reasons, I would agree that the government would be best) would need to determine what is releasable and what needs to be kept from the public.  After all, once the data is made public, it would be nearly impossible to remove it from the web.