Supporters of a free and open internet rallied to oppose SOPA and PIPA… most notably with the largest online protest in history and with a blackout day to raise the public’s awareness of  the flawed legislation.  The result is that passage of SOPA and PIPA has been indefinitely postponed.

That is not to say that another set of similarly flawed legislation will reappear in the future, so be prepared.

ReadWriteWeb reports that the United States and India are teaming up to open source the data.gov data portal for all governments to use.

From the Data.gov website… www.data.gov/opengovplatform:

Among the actions in the U.S. National Action Plan announced by President Obama is an effort under the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue to produce “Data.gov-in-a-Box,” an open source version of the United States’ Data.gov data portal and India’s India.gov.in document portal. The U.S. and India are working together to produce an open source version available for implementation by countries globally, encouraging governments around the word to stand up open data sites that promote transparency, improve citizen engagement, and engage application developers in continuously improving these efforts. Technical teams from the governments of the U.S. and India have been working together since August of this year, with a planned launch of a complete open source product (which is now called the Open Government Platform (OGPL) to reflect its broad scope) in early 2012. Find out more about the evolution of this project from the U.S. Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer.

This is really great news for those of us who want more transparency and effectiveness in government.

How important?  Consider the example mentioned in Edward Tenner‘s March 2011 TED Talk on how the U.S. forced such open sharing of data among researchers in WWII to quickly solve the problem of producing massive amounts of penillicin.   There are scores of other problems that would benefit from “open science”.

Getting back to the Nielson TEDx Talk, he relates how Galileo hid his research in anagrams and cyphers (like others did in his time) to prevent others from taking credit.  We got a glimpse of Galileo’s notes and methods during at the February 2009 Ignite Ann Arbor talk by University of Michigan Special Collections librarian Peggy Daub.

Galileo’s decision to more openly share his telescope discoveries surely prompted others to do the same.   One wonders how much less knowledge we would have today if they had continued to keep their discoveries more sequestered.

More government agencies need to understand the value of doing this… and then do it.

Stanford’s Mapping the Republic of Letters project maps the letters exchanged among hundreds of individuals from 1632 to 1824, many of which led to the various revolutions of the time.

The interactive display tool allows one to select which correspondents, sender/receiver option, date range, and display option to use.  Not only can you visualize the “social network” of various intellectuals, you can see how it changes over time.

It would be nice if the display tool is soon available as an open source product that all can use to visualize our internet communications.

The New York Times has rolled out a new, experimental feature, Longitude, that maps stories based on Geonames.

The app shows current news stories on an interactive map.  Clicking on a placemark shows a snippet of the stories relating to that location.

This is an example of what can be done with open, linked data… something we need more of, not less.

Imagine a mashup of data/news from other organizations as they begin to link to their information this way.  There could be a different icon style for each selectable feed… much like importing external calendars into a Google Calendar.

(Suggestion for future versions:  make the icons variable size and opacity based on the map’s zoom … or maybe by relevancy to the viewer’s preset topics of interest.)

Even while some in this country seek to restrict universally available high speed internet access at affordable prices, the United Nations has recognized the importance of the internet “for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress” and deemed internet access a human right.

This ReadWriteWeb.com item provides the details.

Data.gov and other similar websites provide more transparency into government operations as well as provide free, open, linked data for businesses, researchers, and citizen advocates.  Watch Tim Berners-Lee’s Feb 2009 TED Talk or any one of Hans Rosling’s TED Talks for a glimpse of how open data can help us understand the reality of what’s happening in our world.

Tim Berners-Lee Feb 2009 TED Talk photo by photonquantiqueCC BY-SA 2.0 on Flickr

Cutting funding for these open data sites will shut down an important new part of our information infrastructure and hamper public and private efforts to make government more efficient and effective.  Much of the data could be very useful for young companies, which provide most of the new jobs.

Visit Sunlight Foundation’s website to weigh in on this issue.

• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
• Ask not what your government can do for you, ask what you can do for your government