Let's "downscale" Linked Data

Abstract

Open data policies and linked data publication are powerful tools for increasing transparency, participatory governance, and accountability. The linked data community proudly emphasizes the economic and societal impact such technology shows. But a closer look proves that the design and deployment of these technologies leave out most of the world's population. The good news is that it will take small but fundamental changes to bridge this gap. Research agendas should be upated to design systems for small infrastructure, provide multimodal interfaces to data, and account better for locally relevant, contextualized data. Now is the time to act, because most linked data technologies are still in development.