Open data: what is it and why are people so scared of it? - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent

"The internet age is entering its next phase, one in which a global network of things looks set to accelerate human progress to break-neck speeds. At the heart of this technological transition is data. But not just any kind of data — open data.     To understand what that means, and thereby understand why there’s been such resistance to the idea, it’s important to first divorce the term data from all its NSA-Wikileaks-Hacking associations.     Data is simply information, digitised. And on the internet, everything is data. There’s financial data, scientific data, geographical data — and right now almost all of it is closed.     By closed, I mean ‘not public’ — and not exactly allowed to share. That may sound all well-and-good, but who wants all their info out there for anyone to see and use?  But not only is that line of thinking short-sighted, it’s woefully misinformed. Your personal data isn’t being opened up. It’s yours and it will stay yours.  So I held a series of interviews with leading figures at the quango Open Data Institute (ODI) about its government-backed data-driven project ... In an attempt to clear up the complexities of data classification, and tackle the public’s pretty poor data literacy, the ODI has designed the above infographic to show what type of data goes where ..."