Civium: GIS for Everyone, the Information Commons, and the Universal
Speaker
Peter Lucas
Chief Executive Officer, MAYA Design
When
-
Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)
Description
In this talk, I will introduce Civium (TM), a vision and architecture for a seamless, distributed, public civic information space. Based on a simple scheme for the universally unique identification of data and a peer-to-peer architecture for the replication of persistent, mutable information objects, Civium can be thought of as a kind of a “Gnutella of facts and opinions”. Civium balances the tension between rigid editorial control and free-for-all, user-contributed chaos by defining an “armature” of definitive, ontology-driven factual data (derived from authoritative public sources), around which unstructured, user-contributed data may accrue without central control. The current prototype comprises a web of tens of millions of separately-replicable, mostly-deconflicted facts (primarily geo-political and geo-physical in nature), along with a number of more specialized collections derived from public databases. The intent is to nurture this data set as an enduring, freely-available public resource. This data set is currently being served from a terabyte-scale, distributed implementation of the VIA Repository, a unique schemaless database architecture. This architecture is optimized for the the free flow of replicated data objects, distributed evolutionary ontology development, and decentralized indexing in an intermittently-connected topology. This server is intended as a prototype ultrapeer in a radically decentralized network of replication nodes and access points.
I will demonstrate the Civium Geobrowser, a next-generation Geographic Information System (GIS) that represents a prototypical client application for visualizing, navigating, and contributing to the Civium information space.
Speaker's Bio
Peter Lucas focuses on the intersection between advanced technology and human capabilities. For over 20 years, he has worked to break down the disciplinary boundaries that lead to technology that is poorly suited to the needs of individuals and society. Peter is CEO of MAYA Design, which he co-founded in 1989. He has guided the growth of MAYA as a premier venue for interdisciplinary product design and technology research, serving both the private and public sectors. Peter received his Ph.D. degree in 1981 from Cornell University, where he studied educational and cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin and was a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow in Cognitive Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests lie at the intersection of computer architecture and product design. He holds 13 patents. His current research activities focus on a radically-distributed replication-based database technology and an associated information architecture intended to support the deployment of a large-scale public information space whose organization will be shaped by market forces and which is intended to scale without bound. Complementing this work is an architecture for the assembly of modular pervasive computing devices whose interoperability is mediated via this information space.
Speaker's Website
http://www.maya.com/about/peter-lucas