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How Much Information is Too Much?

Written by Jim Mays

Tuesday, 31 March 2009 17:00

As the mayor of a small town, I’ve found there are very few official duties and many unofficial ones. A resident called me one frigid winter Saturday evening to ask if there was something that could be done about a dog roaming his neighborhood. I suppose in a less rural area the resident would have been advised to call animal control, but since I have a heart for animals, I didn’t want the animal to either freeze to death waiting for animal control to respond, or end up being euthanized.

The dog, a greyhound-mix, didn’t seem to mind jumping into the back seat of my car for a trip to the local veterinarian. Being a tech-savvy kind of guy, I knew that many animals have a chip placed under their skin. Within minutes I had the name, address and telephone number of the dog’s owner, and was ready to take it home, the only problem being the address wasn’t anywhere close, and no one was answering the telephone.

I don’t encourage people to yak on their cell phones as they drive, and I definitely don’t encourage people to search the Internet from their cell phones; but this was an emergency, right? Within seconds of Googling the name of the owner and city indicated on the chip, I found the owner. This story has a happy ending because the dog, whose name I forgot, ended up getting a free ride home courtesy of his village government and something else called the semantic web.

The Internet has become more than just hyperlinks. Thanks to something called the semantic web, it’s become a way to discover how things are related to each other. Tim Berners-Lee, the guy whom some call the inventor of the Internet, came up with this concept in an article published in Scientific American in 2001. He envisioned the Internet as a universal medium through which computers learn to “understand” and exchange information. One way they do this is by connecting elements to provide a dictionary of sorts that describes how information is related. For example, an ontology for addresses would include information identifying the characteristics of a zip code, a city and a state.

Possibly one of the best examples of the semantic web can be seen through Facebook, an immensely popular networking website. Facebook started as a way for students at an Ivy League college to stay in touch, but it has gone way beyond that. Recently my long dormant Facebook account sprang to life with invitations and comments from people I haven’t heard from in years.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for my newfound popularity. I’m guessing it has to do with something that author Malcolm Gladwell refers to as “the tipping point.” A tipping point is the place in time where a disease goes from an outbreak to an epidemic; where a goofy video goes from being merely entertaining to a must-see if you want something to talk about at work; and where a sleepy town becomes a booming metropolis. If a middle-aged guy like me is getting multiple “friend requests” you can guess that Facebook has just gone “nuclear” in terms of its popularity. It’s not so much that I’m “connected”, as the fact that people have begun to realize the power of connections. Facebook helps people determine how they are connected through various affinities such as high school, college and political beliefs.

At the heart of Facebook’s popularity is something known as “social networking.” Back in the pre-computer days it was known as being “a friend of a friend.” It works like this: you’re in the heart of deepest Mongolia, quite possibly the only English speaker for thousands of miles, when you meet a guy who tells you (through an interpreter) about his cousin, Yang, who it so happens, emigrated to America and attended your high school. In fact, Yang sat three rows behind your youngest brother in Algebra class. It’s all about relationships, whether they are people or objects. These relationships form the basis behind the popularity of Facebook and other social networking sites. Whether you realize it or not, the semantic web already has affected your life.

If you’ve shopped at Amazon.com, you’ve probably seen the “people who bought this book also bought ...” link. That’s the semantic web. Amazon figures there is some kind of relationship between people who have purchased certain books, and is using this to pitch additional books. The semantic web is also about providing some meaning or context to a particular term. For instance, you might be doing a web search on Cardinals. Are you looking for information about the brilliantly colored state bird for seven states, or are you looking for the professional baseball team improbably located in Arizona? With additional terms you can provide some context that helps a search engine to know which of those things is the most relevant.

Context and meaning are important, but the semantic web also includes metadata, which is information — not just a description — about a certain item. For instance, metadata for bears might also include the term “mammals” which, in theory, allows you to find a list of all mammals, not just bears. Data on the semantic web also includes ontologies (knowledge trees) that represent how data is related. Associating the number, 90210, with the city of Beverly Hills and the state of California facilitates discovery of this swanky neighborhood; and it might also help you to discover the television show of the same name.

As part of new healthcare laws recently signed into effect by President Obama, health care records can use the power of the semantic web to make healthcare more efficient. During a signing ceremony on February 4, the President explained how computerizing all health records would not only save money and create jobs, but also reduce medical errors and provide greater access to affordable health care. President Obama referred to this as “the single largest investment in prevention and wellness in history.”

Of course, who isn’t for more efficient and affordable health care? However, there is a downside to all of this information. This will put all people in a position where the opinions they express on the most mundane matters may have the potential to haunt them later. According to one estimate, up to 75 percent of employers search Facebook for clues to a potential job candidate’s suitability for employment. Innocent comments made on a website could ruin your reputation.

As far as your health is concerned, with the power of the semantic web, your doctor, your insurance company and the government will know far more about your health history than ever before. From a government perspective it might make good financial sense to deny benefits to people who routinely abuse their bodies. It might make good sense to identify those who are experiencing chronic mental health or addiction issues and take preventative steps to help them. But who makes those decisions — experts in the field, or some bureaucrat? Once someone has received a specific diagnosis he or she might obtain the necessary help; or he or she might discover that this diagnosis is a barrier to overcoming problems.

We all stand to benefit from the power to see how people and information are related. Through technology people can get the support and information they need to live better lives. However, there is a price to pay, and we will need to be vigilant to make sure we don’t end up losing our privacy and our freedom.

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