it's data that asks to be investigated. There is no reason to query meaningless data. A query that tells you something you didn't know is infinitely more useful than a query that tells you what you already knew, and a dataset that encourages you to ask your own questions and craft your own queries is infinitely more effective than, say, an imaginary book catalog or some other nonsense that doesn't at all tempt the student to ask more questions of the data.

and besides: technology is a facet of society, it is not a purely rationalist act.