the Web

For a little over a decade, those researchers and visionaries originally involved in establishing the infrastructure for the World Wide Web have set their sights higher.  While hyperlinking Web pages has been pivotal to creating a Web of documents, the more recent goals to establish a Semantic Web involve hyperlinking data, or individual elements within a Web page.  In attaching unique identifiers (in the form of Uniform Resource Identifiers or URIs) and metadata to data points (rather than to just the documents where those data points appear) machines are able to interpret, not just what the browser should display, but also what the page is about.  The hope is that, in providing machines with the capacity to interpret what data is about, it will be possible to drastically improve Web search and to allow researchers to perform automated reasoning on the massive amounts of data contributed to the Web.  There are numerous examples where this infrastructure is already having impact (albeit largely behind-the-scenes).  For instance, the New York Times has already “semantified” all of its data and created a Semantic API where researchers can query its database.  Facebook’s Graph API, which employs Semantic Web infrastructure to structure user profile data, has been the foundation for several studies attempting to make sense of human behavior and interactions through the platform’s “big data.” more...

Rather than compiling my own charts this week, I have gathered a number of figures created by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that address in the US.  This first chart shows that it was only in 2008 that 50% of adults in America first had broadband access at home.  These data might not be the best representation of access, however, because we know that many people, particularly blacks and Hispanics, are accessing the Internet through mobile devices and may be living in urban environments where public wifi is ubiquitous more...

Because I am usually trapped in the Sociology Department’s data dungeon on Wednesdays, I have decided to establish a recurring series of posts that discuss new trends or data.

Last week, I compiled some data from a 2005 Pew study to explore whether college students are using Online dating.  I’ve now replicated that chart for Pew’s 2009 data.What’s most striking about these data is their sizable departure from the 2005 data.  Particularly, because the movement is opposite of the expected direction (i.e., upward).  more...