Public Service, Public Data, and the Web

Next time I speak to a non-technical audience about the "GeoWeb", I'm going to lean heavily on Paul Ramsey's clever and informative talk (click through for the PDF).

Glossing over the different architectures of the Internet is the right thing to do for that audience, so long as you don't get them hooked with lots of Web examples (like pages 84-93 of the PDF) and then sell them "Web Services" (like WFS on page 94) that aren't actually of the Web and haven't really been a success at getting data into the public's hands. Don't bait and switch, in other words.