Data is all about Who-What-Where-When. Language is about Subject-Object-Space-Time. Essentially, they’re the same thing. So why are they so disconnected?

I studied Romance languages at university and I’m intrigued by the structure and diversity of language. The roots of what we now think of data come from the tally sticks of old; pieces of wood with scratches on to mark the items of an account which would then be split in two so that the seller and the buyer each had a matching half.

Rows and columns still work, but only up to a point. A tally stick will tell you how many, but it probably won’t describe the items or tell you where and when they were bought. And that’s where language and data reveal their similarity.

All language is data. We might not think about data as Subject-Object-Space-Time day to day. But we all know Who-What-Where-When. Humans use them all the time, so why doesn’t most database technology speak the same language?

Actually, it can. Consono’s agnostic analytics technology does speak Who, What, Where, and When and then translates it so data applications can use it too. Any Who, any What, any Where, any time you need it. This is the year you’ll be hearing more about it. If you want to check it out, get in touch.