Atomisation and Open Data

Atomisation on a large scale (such as in the Debian ‘apt’ packaging system) has allowed large software projects to be amazingly productive through their use of a decentralised, collaborative, incremental development process. Atomisation works so well because it allows us to ‘divide and conquer’ the organizational and conceptual problems of highly complex systems.

But what other kinds of information can be atomised? What are the possibilities and problems of this approach for forms of information other than software? How do we best design data APIs, discover and distribute existing resources, and recombine decentralised datasets?

Drawing on examples from geodata to Shakespeare we’ll demonstrate how atomisation is key to unlocking the potential of open data as well as how we can best begin to apply the lessons of open source to the world of open data.