Truly Digital – Open Data is Nothing Without a Narrative

One of the best things about the internet is that it brings so many big questions and big ideas. Will technology provide growth, freedom, democracy? Is crowd-funding the answer to investment? Is democratised distribution and production of content the future of expression? Is open source a radical way to develop products? And so on: if you read books on these topics, they all have title tag lines with words like “revolution” or “radical”. Chris Anderson’s “Free – The Future of a Radical Price” or Cukier/Mayer-Schönberger’s “Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We  Live, Work and Think” (recently reviewed by Netopia) are only two examples. Netopia is no different, our Manifesto has similar language. It’s very dramatic and important and philosophical and to me, that’s a big part of the appeal of these issues.

One of the big ideas is Open Data and it will be discussed at the Truly Digital Conference in Helsinki this week. The headline is “Open Data is Nothing Without a Narrative” and it will take a closer look on the topic of the arts in the digital space. I have been invited to speak and will introduce my new book “The Dream of Alexandria – the Dilemma of Digital Distribution”. Regrettably, it’s only available in Swedish (so far). If you have the chance, please join us at the beautiful Kiasma in Helsinki this week!