Comments for Han-teng Liao 廖漢騰

Comment on World Bank President: “Open data, open knowledge and open solutions” by Han-Teng Liao

Han-Teng Liao — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 04:26:38 +0000

Hi, Ms. Molly (Norris?)
Are you addressing to me or Mr. Matthew Montagu-Pollock?
I am sure that I am not criticizing or praising the World Bank myself. I only wanted to point out something that I am aware of. I know for a fact that Professor Hans Rosling had given a series of TED talk, in which he demanded open access relatively early. I was exposed to that TED talk that he gave in 2006 http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
Thus, I was not posing an evaluative question to compare the World Bank with other institutions that are funded with public money from several states. People are entitled to have their viewpoints about when and how much is enough.
So as an open source/free content believer myself, I am not only looking for the free and open access to data, but also to raw/disaggregate data, which is summarized by Dr. Dennis M. Ray.
http://globalization.icaap.org/content/special/Ray.html
As for Mr. Matthew Montagu-Pollock’s comment, I think he is entitled to voicing his experience. However, I do agree with you that the timing issue is important here, so he is very kind to let me to add to his comment some of the specific information about time , to provide some context for this progress.
I guess we can all agree that this general move is a progress. My intention is trying to keep a series of records of who has done what and when, so that people can make up their own minds based on facts and records.
So I am looking forwards to see if you can summarize how other institutions have not done as good as what the World Bank has achieved now. Though I will use that comparison to ask other institutions to change, not to argue that the World Bank has done enough or has done its best. Of course you can say the World Bank is currently among the leaders in the field, but my idea of “field” may be different than yours. I tend to consider all other transnational website/institutions as part of the field. In this regard I will argue that what Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany has done with their stats and toolserver have done even better jobs. Remember they are not even using public money but rather individual donations.
Finally, I think we can all agree open access/data is the right direction forwards. It is just that we have different ideas of the main audience/users for the open data and data providers. In this regard, comparisons are not absolute but relative.
I should visit the World Bank sometime since I am in DC now. Thank you for clarifying your vies. I am sure your comment here will be helpful to some other readers/users. Thank you for your valuable comments

Comment on World Bank President: “Open data, open knowledge and open solutions” by mollyhere

mollyhere — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:38:35 +0000

Check out:

http://data.worldbank.org/

As you can see, the World Bank is committed to free, accessible data.

Hans Rosling has spoken at and advised the Bank on numerous occasions, including twice last week during the annual meetings, which were broadcast online with social media inclusion from over 130 countries(1). The World Bank works with his son Ola Rosling to release it’s data through Google searches in 34 languages (2).

If your criticism is that this didn’t happen fast enough, it’s important to judge an organization against its comparators, such as other development banks, agencies or the UN. The World Bank’s open data initiative and new full disclosure policy are considered leaders in the field.

(1) http://blogs.worldbank.org/meetings/open-forum/session-1
(2)http://blogs.worldbank.org/insidetheweb/world-bank-data-now-available-in-34-languages-on-google

Comment on World Bank President: “Open data, open knowledge and open solutions” by Matthew Montagu-Pollock

Matthew Montagu-Pollock — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 11:55:29 +0000

As early as 1999, I wrote to the World Bank press office to criticize its failure to share information on its website.
The following paragraphs are some excerpts from the letter.

“I am SO irritated with this website [the World Bank's official website]. I promise you, if ever I get a chance to interview Mr Wolfensohn [the World Bank's president from 1995 to 2005], I’m going to hector him, slowly and painfully, about this website. Why, when the World Bank has, supposedly, changed its entire policy towards inclusion and spreading information, is the World Bank website still set up as an almost entirely commercial operation? Why not make the information available?

“I would just like to ask you to ponder the introductory lines of the World Development Report 1998/9 – the overview – and consider these lines, in the context of your website, which, as you know, excludes 95% of the public that you, the World Bank, are supposedly serving. The lines read thus:

‘”Knowledge is like light. Weightless and intangible, it can easily travel the world, enlightening the lives of people everywhere. Yet billions of people still live in the darkness of poverty – unnecessarily.”

“Just so. I would suggest that the personnel at the World Bank website should paste these lines up in large type at the entrance to their office, as a succinct and exact description of what is wrong with the website, why it is not functioning as it should, and what could be done to remedy it. The knowledge that you have available at the World Bank could travel the world, costlessly. Yet you deliberately choose not to let it.”

The World Bank replied publicly, politely, and (privately) admitted that I had caused irritation and offence. But they did nothing, for a decade.

Comment on Beijing will downplay the role of Wikileaks by philokunst

philokunst — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:29:54 +0000

kinda interested in your opinion and assumption, though I am not a journalist, either a critic.

Comment on A series of cartogram to show the growth and possible geographical diffusion of Internet users in East Asia by rera

rera — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:38:59 +0000

thank you for the information in this blog.

Comment on The road from Copenhagen to Tibet: Mapping carbon dioxide emissions in East Asia by Han-Teng Liao

Han-Teng Liao — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:56:02 +0000

Thanks for sharing. I agree with you that some adjustment to population distribution may help the overall world map as you have done for the new worldmapper’s cartogram. This cartogram I make is to highlight the industry-heavy provinces like Shandong and Guangdong.

The correlation between factories and people may help, but the larger point I want to raise is that different unit of analysis and the corresponding “population” together implies different arena of politics. The nation-states for the global politics, the provinces for Chinese domestic politics.

I intend to bridge the two by putting Chinese provinces into East Asian, showing the centrality of certain Chinese provinces and their geographic closeness to the Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Comment on The road from Copenhagen to Tibet: Mapping carbon dioxide emissions in East Asia by worldmapper

worldmapper — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:58:47 +0000

Nice post. Please note that we from worldmapper have done a similar global map as well, taking the population distribution within a country into account as well. On this map the differences between West and East in China are shown there, whereas the map that you are referring to uses only the total emissions per country.
The other map can be found here: http://benhennig.postgrad.shef.ac.uk/?p=185

Comment on A (mental) milestone for my PhD project by mz

mz — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:45:40 +0000

Yay, governance!

Comment on Re-enchantment and Rationalization in Internet by michaelhills

michaelhills — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:50:34 +0000

Han-Teng,

Great points, but you’re going to need to find a different example of deception. The Dancing Matt videos were very much real. The speech you link to is a piece of satire that Matt threw together because he was sick of being accused of being a fake. If you watch again through to the end, you’ll see how ridiculous he gets.

Or perhaps you don’t need another example, perhaps the hoax speech being a hoax could apply?

Michael

Comment on Role of Public Librarians and Musuem Curators by David Dawson

David Dawson — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:52:59 +0000

Intersting perceptions! Curators, Librarians and Archivists are guardians of the ‘public domain’ – and I think that there are real resonances with the Public Value debate that OfCOM have been leading for a while. For som in the sector, there is a real tension between putting collections online for everyone to discover, and the impact of Web2.0 technologies. Our sector wants to have the dialogue, but has a very keen sense of the value of ‘authenticity’ and accuracy. At the smae time, many of the real experts in their field (whether it is a bug or a bus hubcap) are outside the formal academic or professional sector, and this opens up some real challenges. When is the ‘curator’ not ‘the’ expert – and how do they manage this when challenged by an expert that isn’t one?

I was in Taiwan some time ago, and was very struck by the wealth of expert knowledge in the institutions, and amongst the professionals I met. But at the same time, I know I did not see the community museums and archives, and those who were interested in local customs and traditions.

But the answer surely is that these are all shades of grey – what we need are peer-to-peer ‘authentication’ mechanisms for people, so that they can build and share their expertise as it develops, and can demonstrate that they are trusted. Can this cope with Druids and Stonehenge? What about different perspectives on shared histories?