Being Everywhere

Smart(er) Data
February 20–21, 2008
Atlanta, GA

field trip
Georgia Institute of
Technology
February 22

DOUG LENAT previews the conference (Audio and slides)
(20 MB pPT)

conference overview
As Web 2.0 meets the information infrastructure, the information delivery model is being upended. New networking tools make it possible for large communities of people to rapidly contribute information, accumulate knowledge, and act on useful new data and conclusions. Better visualization tools are changing the way we see the world and our relationships. We demand that information in all its rich forms—video, audio, images, documents, text—be combined, in context, and delivered to users and applications in real time.

How can we sift through the thousands of options for defining and redefining relationships, customizing products, discovering new markets, and making better decisions when we seemingly have no clear understanding of where to start? We’ll tackle some of the nagging dilemmas we face when dealing with mixtures of data, information, and knowledge, and how we and our machines will make decisions in the future.

We're creating software that improves the ability of computers to negotiate with each other over the Internet, laying the foundation for on-the-fly information integration. If we can automate the extraction and integration of data from disparate, unstructured sources, how will we redefine our notions of acceptable information quality, governance, and accountability?

We assume that newer systems will be smarter and will capture "meaning." Ontologies provide knowledge about domains of interest better than expert systems do, but they can limit how we look at and categorize data. New data and metadata types, such as transitory, contextual, and exhaust data, might prove worthwhile, but is their value enough to justify the cost of collection and storage?

What kinds of new integration, mining, collaboration, and query tools will help improve our decision making? Should we allow mechanical savants to make more decisions? If so, which ones? Philosophical, economic, and legal issues abound, though policymaking will most likely lag technology implementation. We'll soon learn whether unearthing known and unknown opportunities buried in mountains of data can make us and our decisions smart(er).

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Partial list of speakers

Dr. Dan Ariely, Professor, MIT, and Author, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Dr. Paul Borrill, President, Replicus Software
Dr. Stephen Brobst, Chief Technology Officer, Teradata
Dr. Bruce D'Ambrosio, VP and Chief Architect, On-Demand Personalization, ATG
Dr. Richard DeMillo, Dean, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Mr. David Gilmour, Founder, President, and CEO, Tacit Software
Dr. James Hendler, Senior Professor, Tetherless World Research Constellation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Dr. Terry Jones, CEO, Fluidinfo
Dr. Michael Miller, Chief Scientist and Founder, Animetrics
Dr. Marvin Minsky, Professor, Media Arts and Sciences Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Mr. James Randi, Founder, James Randi Educational Foundation
Dr. Dave Reiner, Senior Technologist, EMC
Mr. Nova Spivack, Founder and CEO, Radar Networks
Mr. Jamie Taylor, Minister of Information, Metaweb Technologies

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