Open Data and a Critical Citizenry

Last week we discussed news that the UK government had released a treasure trove of public spending data. Charles Arthur, the Guardian's technology editor, wrote at the time how crucial it was for citizens to find ways to examine and interpret the data; otherwise it would be useless. Now, an anonymous reader sends in a response from open data activist David Eaves, who takes it a step further. He writes, "We need a data-literate citizenry, not just a small elite of hackers and policy wonks. And the best way to cultivate that broad-based literacy is not to release in small or measured quantities, but to flood us with data. To provide thousands of niches that will interest people in learning, playing and working with open data. ... It is worth remembering: We didn’t build libraries for an already literate citizenry. We built libraries to help citizens become literate. Today we build open data portals not because we have a data or public policy literate citizenry, we build them so that citizens may become literate in data, visualization, coding and public policy."

Religion interprets the data.

[elucido]

It's impossible to ever have a data literate citizenship because data is interpreted by religion. It's interpreted by religion because people aren't naturally reasonable and don't do whats in their individual self interest.

An example, if the sexual behavior of every human being in the USA were released what would be the response by the general public? If you want to predict the response look at the response to homosexuality.

Another example, if nobody in the USA had any secret from anyone else what would be the result?

If you are a jew are you comfortable with neo-nazi's having your medical records? If you are muslim are you comfortable with jews having access to your medical history? If you are anyone are you comfortable with everyone having access to every dumb thing you've said or done in your entire life?

Sure they wont be as much blackmail going on, instead people will be getting killed for who they are and with unlimited information it's much easier to make the lists.