Blog
While there is still no absolute consensus on the definition of Web3, the applications and concepts associated with the term have been increasingly widely explored in recent years and some of its propositions such as cryptocurrencies have already reached the general public. The term Web3 usually refers to the third generation of the World Wide Web, sometimes called the "decentralised web", which relies on the use of cryptography and decentralised technologies such as blockchain to create a more secure and transparent internet.
Although still in its infancy, we are already seeing the emergence of new concepts such as non-fungible tokens (NFTS), which are nothing more than encrypted digital assets, cryptocurrencies such as the well-known bitcoin, and decentralised applications (DApps), which are beginning to appear mainly in the financial world in the form of decentralised finance (DeFi).
However, the greatest promise of Web3 lies in the possibility of empowering users in a new form of decentralised internet that gives them back ownership and control of their data and identities, which are now held by large technology platforms. In fact, Web3 is true to the original concept of the internet and the World Wide Web, where no one's permission would be needed to publish data and information and where there was no provision for central control of interactions.
In the same way that Web 2.0 drove the explosion of content and data creation by all kinds of people, and a culture of participation through multiple forms of social networking that is influencing the way we live today, Web3 also has the potential to change our near future.
Open data on Web3
And among the major changes that will ideally unfold with the adoption of Web3 technologies and paradigms by an increasing number of users and organisations is a new revolution in open data.
On the one hand, one of the main advantages of open data in the Web3 environment is that it can contribute to creating a more transparent and trustworthy internet. With traditional centralised systems, it is very difficult to verify the accuracy and authenticity of data, and there needs to be trust in the organisation that collects and publishes it. In the case of data managed and opened by public administrations this is not a major problem because of the presumption of trust that public administrations enjoy. But it is very limiting when it comes to opening data with user-generated information or even to generating datasets with potentially sensitive information.
However, through a decentralised application, open data could ideally be stored on a blockchain, allowing for a transparent and immutable record of the data. This can help to increase trust in the data being used and help new open data sets to emerge that are not managed by public authorities, companies or other data management organisations.
Clearly, to realise the full potential of open data in the web3 environment, it is important that data is available in a machine-readable format and that there are clear guidelines on how it can be used and shared. This will help to ensure that the data is being used in a way that is ethical and respectful of the people or organisations that originally collected it. In this context the Semantic Web, as the "web of data" is expected to play an important role in the Web3 ecosystem, as decentralisation and transparency are key aspects of both. In Web3, ontologies and tags used in the Semantic Web have the potential to make data stored in the blockchain more easily accessible and understandable for machines.
In addition, the Semantic Web can also contribute to creating more intelligent and personalised applications on the Web3. For example, ontologies can be used to improve the accuracy of recommender systems and make chatbots and other virtual assistance systems more efficient and "smarter".
And in a context with a greater amount of open data that can also be enriched thanks to the semantic web, the application of artificial intelligence or automated learning will be able to generate more useful applications for users. It will probably even be possible to authorise artificial intelligence applications that are currently not allowed due to the limited capacity we have to control the use of data with security guarantees.
On the other hand, Web3 proposes greater transparency and security on the internet, but above all that users will once again be the owners of their own data, that they will have control over what others can and cannot do with this data and that they can be adequately compensated for these uses of data. In this way, a new explosion of open data is expected to be generated by the users themselves, who if they feel safe, secure and comfortable to share data, and even compensated for the use of their data, will be able to participate in the generation of many useful open data sets to enrich applications or create predictive models of all kinds.
While all this disruption sounds very promising, the transition from a data oligopoly to democratic and open data management will take time. The first steps towards decentralisation of internet applications are still being taken and the whole concept of Web3 is still a work in progress. Overall, Web3 is a desirable concept in terms of improved data security and privacy, and thus possibilities for opening up more data, but it still requires an advanced digital infrastructure and regulation that is not yet available for it to be fully deployed.
Content prepared by Jose Luis Marín, Senior Consultant in Data, Strategy, Innovation & Digitalization.
The contents and views reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author.
Blog
An important part of the data which is published on the Semantic Web, where resources are identified by URIs, is stored within triple store databases. This data can only be accessed through SPARQL queries via a SPARQL endpoint.
Moreover, the URIs used, usually designed in a pattern, in most of the datasets which are stored in those databases are not dereferenced, meaning that requests made to that identifier are met with no response (an ‘error 404’ message).
Given the current situation, in which this data is only accessible by machines, and combined with the push of the Linked Data movement, various projects have emerged in which the main objective is to generate human views of the data through web interfaces (where the views of the resources are interlinked), as well as offering a service where the URIs are dereferenced.
Pubby is perhaps the best-known of the projects which have been created for this purpose. It is a Java developed web application, whose code is shared under the open source license Apache Version 2.0. It is designed to be deployed on a system that has SPARQL access to the database of triplets that you wish to apply.
The non-dereferenced URIs and the dereferenced URIs are mapped through a configuration file which is managed by the Pubby server. The application uses this to process the requests to the mapped URIs, requesting the information of the original URI to the associated database (via a SPARQL ‘DESCRIBE’ query) and returning the results to the client in the requested format.
In addition, Pubby provides a simple HTML view of the stored data and manages content negotiation between the different representations. Users can navigate between the HTML views of the linked resources (Linked Data) via the web interface. These views show all the information of the resources, including their attributes and relationships with other resources.
Multiple parallel projects (forks) and inspired projects have emerged from the Pubby project. One of the most recent is the Linked Open Data Inspector (LODI) project, developed by the Quercus software engineering group at the University of Extremadura under Creative Commons 3.0. This project is developed in Node.js and features some positive differences with respect to Pubby:
● It provides a simple HTML view for a general audience, and a more detailed view for programmers.
● It provides resource information in N3 format (but not RDF/XML or Turtle).
● In the case of resources with geospatial information, it displays a map detailing the location.
● In the case of detected images (.jpg, .jpeg or .png), these images are shown automatically.
There are currently two open data portals which are using LODI: Open Data Cáceres and Open Data UEx.
Pubby, LODI and other similar projects (such as LODDY), using the AGROVOC thesaurus, have managed to expose information that was retained within RDF databases which was not accessible to humans. Projects like these help the linked data web continue to grow, both in quantity and quality, putting human interaction at the centre of this progress.
Noticia
La red europea LAPSI ha seleccionado el portal datos.gob.es entre la terna de finalistas de su Tercer Premio al portal sobre información del sector público más amigable de la Unión Europea.
El jurado del concurso estima, así, que el sitio web que gestiona el Catálogo de Información Pública de la Administración General del Estado reúne las mejores valoraciones respecto a los criterios básicos de la convocatoria: diseño atractivo, usabilidad y difusión de la reutilización de los datos públicos.
Entre los proyectos elegidos para la fase final figura, además del portal sueco InfoTorg, la iniciativa española CartoCiudad, que está auspiciada por el Instituto Geográfico Nacional y que integra datos de otras fuentes como la Dirección General del Catastro.
La presencia de dos finalistas del sector público español en el premio LAPSI pone de manifiesto, tal y como recoge el Portal de Administración Electrónica, el esfuerzo de nuestro país para poner a disposición de empresas y ciudadanos la información del sector público y para promover su reutilización.
La Comisión Europea ha valorado en unos 2.000 millones de euros el potencial económico del sector infomediario en España, con una cuota ya alcanzada de entre 550 y 650 millones de euros, según el Estudio publicado el pasado mes de junio por el Observatorio Nacional de las Telecomunicaciones y para la Sociedad de la Información (ONTSI) y por Proyecto Aporta.
La reciente aprobación del Real Decreto 1495/2011 y la apertura de la versión beta del portal datos.gob.es en el mes de octubre de 2011 permitirán seguir avanzando en la potenciación de este sector de la economía digital y en la construcción de una administración más abierta y transparente.
El mantenimiento del portal datos.gob.es está encomendando por el Real Decreto 1495/2011 a la Secretaría de Estado de Administración Pública y a la Secretaría de Estado de Telecomunicaciones y Sociedad de la Información, en colaboración con el resto de organismos del sector público estatal.