In 2009 Sir Time Berners-Lee, cited by many as the innovative mind behind the development of the world wide web, encouraged the audience at one of his talks to join him in the chant “Raw Data Now!” (10mins 50secs). The arguments for open data (and even the chant itself) had been developing over the previous few years.
Berners-Lee returned to speak at TED again the next year and highlighted some of the very early impacts that have begun to be realised as data sets are freeded up.