Joi Ito on Openness and the Media Lab

"As an example of how networked knowledge might work, [Joi Ito, new director of the MIT Media Lab] talks about his work with Safecast, a networked response to the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami and the Fukushima crisis. As Joi was interviewing at the Media Lab, the disaster unfolded, and Joi found himself at the center of an international network that involved academics, nuclear scientists, hardware designers, data visualization experts and others. Collectively, they’ve developed low-cost geiger counters which are mounted on cars and driven around Japan collecting massive sets of data. They can now demonstrate that there’s more radiation in areas outside the exclusion zone than within it, raising complicated questions about the political decisions around moving people from the areas near the reactor. There are some important lessons learned from the project. Open data matters – Joi’s team publishes all their data under CC-0, meaning it can be very widely shared...."