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Tim Berners-Lee is credited as one of the main inventors of the World Wide Web. With an accomplishment like that on your resume, people tend to sit up and take notice when you have something to say – notably when that something is about The Next Web. In this compelling TED talk, Tim discusses what will be the next evolution of the Web: linked data. As the TED video summary says, “open, linked data…could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.”

We are already seeing the possibilities of this next Web in augmented reality applications where data is overlaid on real world information to give a more useful (augmented) view of a subject. See this CNET article to get a glimpse into the possibilities.

Data is ubiquitous, but often it is unconnected, hoarded or proprietary. The true power in linked data is combining information from different sources to create new possibilities. We have already seen in the gift economy of the social Web that the more information given away, the more valuable a person or organization can become. Why shouldn’t the same be true for data itself? Why can’t data be treated as social capital just like words, pictures, music, etc.?

In Tim Berners-Lee’s Web future, it will be!