Page:Aaron Swartz s A Programmable Web An Unfinished Work.pdf/17

1. INTRODUCTION: A PROGRAMMABLE WEB   5 (just kidding; not that many times (just kidding; I’ve never been published (just kidding; I have, but I just wanted more practice (just kidding; I practice plenty (just kidding; I never practice (just kidding; I just wanted to publish a book (just kidding; I just wanted to write a book (just kidding; it’s easy to write a book (just kidding; it’s a death march (just kidding; it’s not so bad (just kidding; my girlfriend left me (just kidding; I left her (just kidding, just kidding, just kidding))))))))))))))) and so here I am again, rehashing all the old ground and ﬁnally getting my chance to complain about what a mistake all the Semantic Web folks have made.

Yet, as my little thought experiment above has hopefully made clear, the programmable web is anything but a pipe dream—it is today’s reality and tomorrow’s banality. No software developer will remain content to limit themselves only to things on the user’s own computer. And no web site developer will be content to limit their site only to users who act with it directly.

Just as the interlinking power of the World Wide Web sucked all available documents into its maw—encouraging people to digitize them, convert them into HTML, give them a URL, and put them on the Internet (hell, as we speak Google is even doing this to entire libraries)—the programmable Web will pull all applications within its grasp. The beneﬁts that come from being connected are just too powerful to ultimately resist.

They will, of course, be granted challenges to business models—as new technologies always are—especially for those who make their money off of gating up and charging access to data. But such practices simply aren’t tenable in the long term, legally or practically (let alone morally). Under US law, facts aren’t copyrightable (thanks to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Feist v. Rural Telephone Service) and databases are just collections of facts. (Some European countries have special database rights, but such extensions have been fervently opposed in the US.)

But even if the law didn’t get in the way, there’s so much value in sharing data that most data providers will eventually come around. Sure, providing a website where people can look things up can be plenty valuable, but it’s nothing compared to what you can do when you combine that information with others.

To take an example from my own career, look at the website OpenSecrets.org. It collects information about who’s contributing money to US political candidates and displays nice charts and tables about the industries that have funded the campaigns of presidential candidates and members of Congress.

Similarly, the website Taxpayer.net provides a wealth of information about Congressional earmarks—the funding requests that members of Congress slip into