LEARN ABOUT CREATURES

(IN OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS)

this project is called LOCAL BIOLOGY (until we think of something better)

Too many tags?

The next version of the internet might be smarter than the current version. By using sentences. You may have already used a site like Facebook -- where it's possible to say "Stu is friends with Chad." This is great fun if you are an adolescent...but put that with a lot of other information and you will soon learn that your ex knows too much about you, and you're forced to try to scribble out all these associations you once had.

So what does this mean for biology? If we, Local Biology, support ourselves in making our observation data semantically tagged -- meaning, we contribute lots of precise data, we pinpoint exact geographic information, seasonal information. We make this easy to share with technology giants like Flickr, the Encyclopedia of Life, Google and everyone else...since in theory we would create all of our information with a Creative Commons license.

On the bright side, it means that technology geeks can play with seasonal visualizations. It means that we, Local Biologists, will have lots of real information to work with as we learn about our local ecosystems for real. It means that all the data we create can stream into scientists hands and they may be able to make cases for preserving plots of land, or helping with understanding the consequences of global climate change.

What do we think about this?