Re: [tlug] Effect of AI and data processing rift on the Semantic Web

[Edward Middleton <emiddleton@example.com>]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Edward Middleton writes:
>
>  > People using FOAF obviously don't think so.  I think these sort of 
>  > perceptions are the biggest problem "the current effort" faces.
>
> What perception problem?

Using your perception of the situation to avoid investigating it.  If 
this is not the case could you explain specifically what you see as 
being OSI-ized.

The views you have expressed seems to be regularly espoused on the 
semantic-web mailing list but it seems to be almost universally by 
people without even a layman's understanding of knowledge 
representation[1] and computer reasoning[2].

> For heaven's sake, Berners-Lee invented the semantic web in 1994!  In some areas, "web ontologies" are taking hold, such as the Dublin Core and RSS feeds. But until they start to connect up in useful ways, there is no "the" semantic web.  That's what makes the World Wide Web such a wonderfully concrete thing: the fundamental facts that the Internet is a singleton and that any URL on the Internet can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet.  It's all connected, by construction.
>   

Compared to developing the WWW, developing a Semantic Web is a 
non-trivial problem.  Not because it is difficult to put semantics in 
web pages, but because it is difficult to work out what semantics need 
to be added to allow AI agents to reason, plan, learn and perform other 
useful tasks.  As you say the WWW has its roots in Project Xanadu 
started in 1960[3] the semantic web in 1994[4], considering this, its 
progress has been pretty impressive.

> Now, what I'm pointing out is that people *using*, say, "RSS
> syndication" (whichever protocol) are behaving in the time-honored
> improve-the-'net fashion: find a practical problem, find practical
> solutions, kaizen and unify until itch-to-write-RFC develops,
> standardize (more or less successfully).  But people participating in
> "semantic web" activities *in order to advance the semantic web* are
> basically OSI-izing.
>   

They are basically providing a means to  use "what works" in AI to web 
problems.   Without some sort of interfaces and implementations using 
"what works" in AI isn't a *practical solution*.

There are an infinite number of problems on the net that lend themselves 
to existing AI approaches, it doesn't make sense to treat them each 
individually with a proprietary solution when you can attack a whole 
class of similar problems.

> I don't which class FOAF falls into.  Maybe FOAF is as common in some
> reasonably large circle as meishi-koukan is in Japan.  If so, it
> solves a practical problem, and I don't need to know what it is,
> either.  Otherwise ....
>   

FOAF[6] is an ontology implemented using W3 OWL.  It solves a class of 
problems relating to identity management.  Look at Googles Social 
Graph[7] for some of the potential uses.

Edward

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_representation
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_reasoning
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson
5. http://www.w3.org/Talks/WWW94Tim/
6. http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/
7. http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/