Scientific data and information increasingly interconnected

Timo Hannay in Nature's Nascent Blog:

"Scientific knowledge — indeed, all of human knowledge — is fundamentally connected ... So even as the quantity of data astonishingly balloons before us, we must not overlook an even more significant development that demands our recognition and support: that the information itself is also becoming more interconnected. One link, tag, or ID at a time, the world’s data are being joined together into a single seething mass that will give us not just one global computer, but also one global database. As befits this role, it will be vast, messy, inconsistent, and confusing. But it will also be of immeasurable value—and a lasting testament to our species and our age."