why SEC filings don't contain semantic, queryable data

Public companies doing business in the U.S. are required to file electronically SEC-mandated public financial reports.  These reports are available on the web through EDGAR.  They are digital text documents that contain tables of data.  You cannot readily use database software to query the data or aggregate data across filings or companies.  EDGAR, in short, contains a huge, important dataset of badly structured, non-semantic public data.

These badly structured, non-semantic public data in EDGAR are one segment within a larger economy of data work.  First the data are extracted from structured, queryable databases within companies and formed into text tables for the public SEC financial reports.  Other companies then take the reports filed with the SEC, extract the public data into a useable form, and sell it.  The net result is a waste of resources and limited access to public data.

Some reasons for this inefficient data economy:

  • Companies want to control the presentation of their financial data.  Formatting the data in way that makes the data difficult to manipulate gives companies more control over data presentations.
  • Companies don’t want their data to be readily compared over time and across companies.  Publicly disclosing data in inconvenient forms effectively lessens the extent of public disclosure.
  • Managers present reports to directors and stockholders.  Presenting data to computers (via databases and APIs) is a less valued activity.

Improving the efficiency of the data economy requires weakening interests in having an inefficient data economy.

Update:  The SEC is providing machine-readable, computable financial reports.

Hair Cuttery Radio points to future of media

Hair Cuttery plays its own music channel, with whatever promotional matter it wants to insert, in its shops.  That’s Hair Cuttery Radio.  It’s the musical equivalent of airlines’ in-flight magazines.  Advertising networks that broker ad inventory from channels like Hair Cuttery Radio surely will emerge, if they don’t exist already.  Expect more of such media in the future.

book price differentiation in early-modern England

Book size and binding type significantly differentiated books in early-modern England.  Book sizes varied by paper size and extent of folding to form multiple book pages.  Common paper sizes were called post, crown, foolscap, and pot; other paper sizes were Imperial, Royal, and demy.  Folding of the paper produced, depending on the extent of folding, folios, quartos, octavos, duodecimos, 16mo, 24mo, 32mo, 48mo, and 64mo.  The largest book sizes were huge: the Imperial folio (30 x 22 inches) and the Royal folio (20 x 12.5 inches).  The smallest books were tiny: the 64mo was 1 5/8 x 1 inches.[1]  Because paper cost was a significant component of book cost, the book price depended significantly on the book size.

Bindings also varied considerably.  Binding prices varied with the size of the book.  In 1669, binding prices for a Bible varied from 1 shilling for Bibles in 12mo and 24mo to 12 shillings for large, folio-sized Bibles.  Binding prices also varied with the quality of the binding.  Standard binding types for binding a quarto Bible varied from 1.5 shilling for a binding with ovals to 5 shillings for a binding with “edges extraordinary.”[2]  In 1785 an English bookseller offered a one-volume edition of Shakespeare in seven bindings with the book price varying from 15 shillings (bound in boards) to 63 shillings (bound in tortoiseshell).[3]  Different sizes for such a volume would imply even greater price differentiation.

The reduction in prices for books over the past four centuries has occurred in conjunction with a reduction in price differentiation for instances of a particular work.  Electronic books could separate books from physical objects and eliminate book-attribute price differentiation. However, most books are bought for the psychic value of purchasing rather than being actually read.  Moreover, the book industry is likely to reap higher revenue with more book price differentiation.  Those two factors create incentives to bind electronic works to price-differentiated objects that offer different perceived experiences of possession.

*  *  *  *  *

Notes:

[1] For a brief note on early-modern English book sizes and formats, see Stuart Bennett, Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles 1660-1800 (Oak Knoll Press, 2004) p. 168.

[2] See book-binding prices in 1669.

[3] Bennett (2004), cited above, p. 8.

 

Verizon continues to offer weather information service

Verizon’s weather-forecast telephone service continues to include an announcement saying that, effect June 1, 2011, Verizon will no longer offer weather-forecast services.  The weather-forecast service continues to offer a weather forecast.

That’s a strange operating procedure for an information service.  Maybe it’s an ironic representation of the challenges of weather forecasting.  Maybe it’s a profound depiction of telephone companies’ urgent quest for a new business model.