Today, data is disconnected. Data is fundamentally diverse, disparate and distributed. This has always been a challenge and it continues to be “the” challenge. Disconnected data is front and center, as enormous amounts of human effort and resource are expended in pursuit of creating human value from data. And it will continue to be “the challenge” for the future, even with advances in AI (such as deep learning) and the like.

The goal is simple in concept and difficult in practice. The goal - that which produces value for humanity - is connected data. Beyond just connected data, we also need organized and accessible data, and the means/tools to work with it. But fundamentally, it is about the connections you make with data - it is about putting the puzzle together for understanding.

I recently watched a presentation by the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, in which he made the...

This is an article I’ve been wanting to write and an idea I’ve wanted to share for a long time. I believe that important things and real insights are more wonderful when they are shared. Just like we must share the natural resources and water that we have on this Earth, so too should we share our insights, our knowledge, our information, our data, and more.

Data is like water. Data flows in the data cycle, in the data ecosystem, just like water flows, in the water cycle, in our Earth ecosystem.

I believe that water is the unsung metaphor that those of us working in the “art of data” have been using for some time. I also believe that nature and technology are interwoven so tightly as to be essentially the same. This article lends credence to the fact that we intuitively (and perhaps not always consciously) see and use this family of metaphors for each of the two concepts...