Wikipedia aggregates more information than those shelves and shelves of old encyclopedias. Google aggregates the world's websites, putting them at our fingertips through simple searches. The list goes on.
But, more aggregation can be done in the way of electronic resources for music and raw data.
Consider the electronic resources for music:
-For radio I go to Pandora, LastFM, or maybe some other site
-For streaming a specific song I try to find the song on YouTube, or go to Grooveshark
-For biographical information I go to Wikipedia
-For lyrics I search in Google and sort through the results (most of which bombard with pop-ups) ... the same for guitar tabs
-Band websites are found on Myspace and Facebook
-For "musician wanted" classifieds, or instrument classifieds, I go to Craigslist
It would be powerful to combine all of these resources into one music website.
Also, consider raw data aggregation:
What the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (BEST) has done is to put all of the publicly available temperature records in one place, in a common format, making it much easier for outside researches to cross check and do their own analysis. Temperature analysis is now both easier for other researchers, but also more accurate since more data means less statistical uncertainty.
Now imagine if all publicly available raw data - scientific, governmental, commercial - were put in one place, in a common format. It would save researchers an unfathomable amount of time, which would be put towards data analysis instead of searching for and organizing data. Additionally, such aggregation would inspire and enable new research ideas that would not have been possible otherwise. Raw data is being used for anything from cell phone apps to physics papers, and it seems essential to begin forming a central database to provide better universal access.
-For streaming a specific song I try to find the song on YouTube, or go to Grooveshark
-For biographical information I go to Wikipedia
-For lyrics I search in Google and sort through the results (most of which bombard with pop-ups) ... the same for guitar tabs
-Band websites are found on Myspace and Facebook
-For "musician wanted" classifieds, or instrument classifieds, I go to Craigslist
It would be powerful to combine all of these resources into one music website.
Also, consider raw data aggregation:
What the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (BEST) has done is to put all of the publicly available temperature records in one place, in a common format, making it much easier for outside researches to cross check and do their own analysis. Temperature analysis is now both easier for other researchers, but also more accurate since more data means less statistical uncertainty.
Now imagine if all publicly available raw data - scientific, governmental, commercial - were put in one place, in a common format. It would save researchers an unfathomable amount of time, which would be put towards data analysis instead of searching for and organizing data. Additionally, such aggregation would inspire and enable new research ideas that would not have been possible otherwise. Raw data is being used for anything from cell phone apps to physics papers, and it seems essential to begin forming a central database to provide better universal access.
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