We shared an article here last year about using metadata to find Paul Revere. It was sort of “tongue in cheek” but a good example of how much power metadata possesses and the positive uses for it.
A more recent article in Beye Network titled, “Social Network Analysis, Metadata and Business Intelligence: Paul Revere’s Ride Revisited,” revisits this exercise that was motivated by the Snowden/NSA incident and debate. The twist is that if you were a revisionist historian at Oxford currently studying that period, it might make interesting speculation to suggest that Paul Revere should have been “neutralized” based on the data. The possible consequence of such a campaign is a dilemma in a society where a person is innocent until found guilty, at least theoretically. But it does make for interesting discussions on a relatable topic.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
