I was quite taken, this evening, with Kingsley Idehen’s notion of the Semantic Web ‘Data Space.’

Kingsley defines a Data Space, simply, as;

“a place where Data Resides”

and

“A Web Data Space is a Web accessible Data Space.”

So far, so straightforward. Yet the notion helps (me, at least) to clarify some thinking about the disconnect between data, application, interface, etc.

A significant aspect of the environment in which we find ourselves that I felt the Data Space notion usefully threw into quite explicit visibility was that of rampant siloisation.

Kingsley writes,

“Unfortunately, what isn’t as obvious to many netizens, is the fact that each of the activities above results in the creation of data that is put into some context by you the user. Even worse, you eventually realize that the service providers aren’t particularly willing, or capable of, giving you unfettered access to your own data. Of course, this isn’t always by design as the infrastructure behind the service can make this a nightmare from security and/or load balancing perspectives. Irrespective of cause, we end up creating our own ‘Data Spaces’ all over the Web without a coherent mechanism for accessing and meshing these ‘Data Spaces’.”

Exactly. As we gambol, carefree, through the elysian fields of participative webbiness, promiscuously participating with every new service that looks our way, we leave a sad trail of orphaned Data Spaces in our wake, many of which we’ll probably never revisit and (almost?) all of which are wholly incapable of communicating with either their creator or one another at or after their conception.

Kingsley goes on to propose a ‘product‘ solution to the problem from his company. I haven’t looked at it directly, so can’t comment. I do think, though, that we could usefully think through some of these issues in more detail before too much more time passes, and too many more orphan Data Spaces are born.

Part of the solution may well be technical, involving some action on the part of ourselves as users, the hosts of the services in question, or (maybe more likely) some equivalent of the original Google that comes in and disrupts flaky paradigms from left field. Surely more important, though, is a reimagining of the problem on the part of those multitudinous services that so irresponsibly encourage us to scatter our data across the web like so many lumps of used chewing gum. They are responsible for this, and they should be encouraged to clean up their mess by offering us the means to join up or purge the putrefying legacy, whilst breathing life into the new Data Spaces of today and tomorrow by giving them the ability to evolve, to communicate, to grow, and to make themselves available to more than one ridiculous little niche application at a time.

Notions of ‘open data’ take us some way forward. Products such as the one that Kingsley describes may meet that movement from the other side. Are the two together enough, or is there more to do to firm up the ideas and principles, and to extend the capability of the technology?

Whatever, I can see plenty of opportunity to run with this ‘Data Space’ idea…

Technorati Tags: open data, openlinksw, Kingsley Idehen, Semantic Web, Talis, Web 3.0

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