Data Vs. Quads

Data vs. Information & Ideas vs. Concepts / IP.

It has irritated me for a very long time that there have been various social forces that have sought us to accept that everything electronic is simply 'data', when that type of characterisation has an array of implied implications.  

Data, is not protectable via copyright and/or intellectual property law; as such, no 'claim' is able to be made on data.

01101001 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100001 00101110

FWIW: https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/binary-to-ascii.html can be used to convert the data to text (information, depending on whether you understand the language that the text is written in...).

Information is protectable in relation to copyright, which is the reason why the code produced by people requires a licensing agreement of some form in-order to be lawfully entitled to use it; in association to the terms outlined in that licensing agreement or one that is otherwise obtained separately.

This is one of the many reasons why I have been so adamant that the work that I have done is not 'free' or simply an 'idea', even if it is done in manner that is inspectable as an 'open source' methodology via platforms that only provide 'open access' without much consideration for either people nor energy.  The work that I & others have done is not merely 'data' - but rather, it is 'information' - and as such, it is protectable via copyright and/or intellectual property law.

Therefore; rather than using the term 'data' in the manner that is otherwise most readily employed, a preference is to define a term that denotes the difference between data and information. As such, the term 'Quad's' is used to denote an information unit.  The term Quads is comprehensible to those who watch star-trek as well as those who understand RDF / Semantic Web systems; and the concept of a Triple or Quad Store.  In this case, it will refer to Quad Stores that are used to store information.  Therefore the term 'Quads' is sought to be used to define information, as is distinct to an ideology that may otherwise reduce a persons life to 'data' for gainful purposes - particularly employable by those with the expertise to understand exactly why they're electing to do so.  

Similarly; yet distinct also, The term 'idea' is often used as the means to protect an idea is not reasonably achieved in the interests of humanity generally at large.  Ideas, should be free; but in a manner that is not unlike the problem with information (or knowledge) being called 'data'; the human equivalence is that a persons work (therein implicitly also, their life) is reduced to the concept of it being an 'idea' that is in-turn expressed as 'data'.  

One of the elements required to address this problem; is to start by ensuring there is a clear distinction between 'data' and 'information' by way of employing the concept of 'quads'; which is in-turn a foundational requirement to support the notion of 'knowledge'. These considerations, are then extended to associate also to temporal and other broader considerations to better support human factors relating to consciousness, creativity, work and related considerations.

Therefore; whilst this is a newly applied concept, the term 'quads' will be used where possible to describe aspects that relates to quad-sources.

Here is an example of a RDF Quad or n-Quad that makes a statement about spiderman:

<http://example.org/#spiderman> <http://www.perceive.net/schemas/relationship/enemyOf> <http://example.org/#green-goblin> <http://example.org/graphs/spiderman> .

Here is the same statement expressed in a JSON-LD format:

{ "@id": "http://example.org/#spiderman", "http://www.perceive.net/schemas/relationship/enemyOf": { "@id": "http://example.org/#green-goblin" }, "@graph": "http://example.org/graphs/spiderman" }

Here is the same statement expressed in binary:

00111100 01101000 01110100 01110100 01110000 00111010 00101111 00101111 01100101 01111000 01100001 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 00101110 01101111 01110010 01100111 00101111 00100011 01110011 01110000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01110010 01101101 01100001 01101110 00111110 00100000 00111100 01101000 01110100 01110100 01110000 00111010 00101111 00101111 01110111 01110111 01110111 00101110 01110000 01100101 01110010 01100011 01100101 01101001 01110110 01100101 00101110 01101110 01100101 01110100 00101111 01110011 01100011 01101000 01100101 01101101 01100001 01110011 00101111 01110010 01100101 01101100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110000 00101111 01100101 01101110 01100101 01101101 01111001 01001111 01100110 00111110 00100000 00111100 01101000 01110100 01110100 01110000 00111010 00101111 00101111 01100101 01111000 01100001 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 00101110 01101111 01110010 01100111 00101111 00100011 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00101101 01100111 01101111 01100010 01101100 01101001 01101110 00111110 00100000 00111100 01101000 01110100 01110100 01110000 00111010 00101111 00101111 01100101 01111000 01100001 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 00101110 01101111 01110010 01100111 00101111 01100111 01110010 01100001 01110000 01101000 01110011 00101111 01110011 01110000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01110010 01101101 01100001 01101110 00111110 00100000 00101110

As these examples demonstrate; there is a difference between 'data' and information; as such, information sources are intended to be formatted natively as Quads and thereby also defined as Quads.  Notwithstanding, the fact that quads, may be converted into json or other formats as required by the application interfaces; the difference really is, that the information is not merely 'data' - but rather, it is 'information' - and as such, it is protectable via copyright and/or intellectual property law. These sorts of considerations are important in the natural world and its various socio-economic systems; and as such, it is important to ensure that the digital world acts to protect the needs of entities that exist in the natural world, and in-turn those that exist within the legal and/or socio-economic domain; in a manner that is consistent with the needs of natural world entities.

Backwards compatibility

As is otherwise noted; it is important that systems are designed to provide a capacity for people to be able to leave the webizen environment and take their 'data' to a platform that defines what they require in those terms.  This is important for a number of reasons; but the most important is that it is important to ensure that people are not locked into a system that is not able to provide the functionality that they require.