Behind every social and business interaction there is data. To understand this statement, let me look at some examples.
You and your purchases
When you buy something, apart from the amount and shop's name, address and phone number etc., there is also the warranty information, maintenance contract, service centre phone numbers, if it is a EMI to be paid, then the reminders to ensure you pay properly, if warranty expires and you want to extend it, then the dates etc., if you get any free coupons, then the details of it, if you bought it as a gift for some one, then the details of that person, if you need to ship it somewhere, then the address and phone numbers, the tracking details until the goods arrived at a place...and so on.
You and your bank
In this case, sure, the bank maintains most of the details on your transactions and offers a monthly statement to you or a online statement. But when you just issue a cheque to some one, the reason why you issued the cheque or when you receive, the reason why you received the money is known only to you. The details of a credit or debit card transaction is clearly not something machine readable. For example, if I buy a laptop from Apple store, the Apple store detail is there but not the fact that it is a laptop.
Now with these simple examples, you can see the connection. What you bought and some additional details are available in the first one (with the shop) and the details of all transactions you did, not just with this shop, but with all others with other instruments (cheque) are available with the bank.
As a individual I would definitely benefit if both the above data are linked and thus makes sense to me. However, how do we make this happen? And how less painful this can be for the end user?
Semantic web is one answer to this problem. When I say semantic web, I mean standards like RDF Linked data allows to specify such linkages provided vocabulary for the above data representations are available. But beyond that every shop and every bank may have to specify using this. I feel at least the online e-commerce portals can start returning such information as a RDF/XML which can be reconciled with the banks, thus allowing a method of getting the details of all your spending automatically.
Imagine how useful this is for paying my taxes..
If the Tax department can simply accept such a format of expenses and the total of it can be shown against my income (assuming you are self-employed), then will it not save a lot of energy for everyone and of course a lot of paper and lot of tracking ?
The beauty of such linkages is that I can simply run through such a data like a breeze and look for any type of spending I did on any category, may be the shop owner can offer more discounts as the loyalty information is there up front and Income tax can reward people by offering discounts as the data is clean and available for scrutiny much more easily than ever saving lots of $$$ on being able to have more efficient tax collection mechanisms.
That's the power of linked data.
This just the surface...and if it happens it can change your and all our lives for ever.
You and your purchases
When you buy something, apart from the amount and shop's name, address and phone number etc., there is also the warranty information, maintenance contract, service centre phone numbers, if it is a EMI to be paid, then the reminders to ensure you pay properly, if warranty expires and you want to extend it, then the dates etc., if you get any free coupons, then the details of it, if you bought it as a gift for some one, then the details of that person, if you need to ship it somewhere, then the address and phone numbers, the tracking details until the goods arrived at a place...and so on.
You and your bank
In this case, sure, the bank maintains most of the details on your transactions and offers a monthly statement to you or a online statement. But when you just issue a cheque to some one, the reason why you issued the cheque or when you receive, the reason why you received the money is known only to you. The details of a credit or debit card transaction is clearly not something machine readable. For example, if I buy a laptop from Apple store, the Apple store detail is there but not the fact that it is a laptop.
Now with these simple examples, you can see the connection. What you bought and some additional details are available in the first one (with the shop) and the details of all transactions you did, not just with this shop, but with all others with other instruments (cheque) are available with the bank.
As a individual I would definitely benefit if both the above data are linked and thus makes sense to me. However, how do we make this happen? And how less painful this can be for the end user?
Semantic web is one answer to this problem. When I say semantic web, I mean standards like RDF Linked data allows to specify such linkages provided vocabulary for the above data representations are available. But beyond that every shop and every bank may have to specify using this. I feel at least the online e-commerce portals can start returning such information as a RDF/XML which can be reconciled with the banks, thus allowing a method of getting the details of all your spending automatically.
Imagine how useful this is for paying my taxes..
If the Tax department can simply accept such a format of expenses and the total of it can be shown against my income (assuming you are self-employed), then will it not save a lot of energy for everyone and of course a lot of paper and lot of tracking ?
The beauty of such linkages is that I can simply run through such a data like a breeze and look for any type of spending I did on any category, may be the shop owner can offer more discounts as the loyalty information is there up front and Income tax can reward people by offering discounts as the data is clean and available for scrutiny much more easily than ever saving lots of $$$ on being able to have more efficient tax collection mechanisms.
That's the power of linked data.
This just the surface...and if it happens it can change your and all our lives for ever.
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