Using Metadata to Revisit History

April 24, 2014 / Melody Smith / Comments Off on Using Metadata to Revisit History

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.

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Melody Smith

Melody K. Smith has provided organizational, social media and digital communication services to a large non-profit for the past twenty years. Prior to that she championed employee engagement and communications in the healthcare field. She holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing. When not wrangling and writing TaxoDiary content for your reading pleasure, Melody writes fiction, rescues dogs and throws legendary dinner parties.