Lessons from the history of literacy

Open data efforts and initiatives tend to focus on the curation and publishing of accessible data for people to use. Conversations on open data commonly surrounds the technology and methodology used to advance these efforts, while there are not as many topics on the people who will be using these data. This talk proposes that the foundation of successful open data program lies in improving data literacy, especially if the intention of open data is public empowerment. Data literacy is the essential feedback loop to enhance the demand and quality of open data and its use. This talk will review the history of literacy (to read and write) and its relationship with industrialization to draw comparisons to our current data industry, and ultimately identify lessons to help us build better data literacy and open data programs