What the Hell?
I was working in projects concerning ethical consumers, including the potential for blockchains to potentially demonstrate the provenance of products. I noted that perhaps more simply what was required was knowledge of brand ownership, rather than the full history of a product’s origin, because one ultimately has to believe the information that would be placed on a blockchain. However, with current corporate culture it can be unclear who owns a given brand, and so whether the owner’s values are consistent with the brand’s values.
I created a tool to determine the ownership of a brand. I wanted as self-sustaining a solution as far as possible, so rather than build a complex server to handle queries, I looked for a primarily client-side solution. I realised I needed a suitable data source, such as Wikipedia, and a suitable way to access information (API) as client-side data scraping would not be effective. I discovered DBpedia which makes Wikipedia information available in a database format, such that queries can be submitted in the SPARQL query language. I wanted a responsive web design that would provide a web app, as well as a website. I considered that the Skeleton CSS library would be sufficient for my needs of building a prototype interface.
I subsequently considered creating a more graphical interface, which could show the hierarchy of ownership. I first made use of D3, before concluding it would probably be better to make a native app.
