Matthias Samwald wrote:
Andraz:
That the bubbles continue to grown is however a sociological
interesting phenomen :-)
And a good sign that something has gone right :)
Giovanni:
Maybe :-) but people do things for many other reason that "they're
right".
I think the LOD project is a great success. It is a very lively
community, there has been significant progress over the last year
(amount of data, quality of underlying technologies such as Virtuoso).
However, the community should take some time to analyze WHY it is
successful, and why it is more successful than attempts of using
RDF/OWL before 2007. Some thoughts on this:
* The main ingredient to the success of LOD is that it is relatively
centralized. It would not work without DBpedia serving as the
'nucleus' of the cloud. It would not work without someone dedicated to
drawing the clould diagram that everyone is happy to show on
Powerpoint slides. It would not work without this mailing list that
serves an open platform for the community. However, I have the
impression that some key persons in the LOD community might not be
happy about this reason for success at all. For them, the LOD project
is a mere testing ground for the next generation of the entire web,
and showing that linked data works in a decentralized way is a crucial
aspect of this vision. The fact that the current LOD cloud was
actually produced in a rather centralized process, and that most of
the valuable data sources in the LOD cloud are actually under the
control of a very small number of stakeholders, is seen as a transient
blemish, at best.
However, I think that this is a problematic situation, and we should
embrace the semi-centralized nature of the LOD project, rather than
hiding it away. Having a close-knit group of stakeholders that
contribute to a partly distributed, partly centralized knowledge base
might actually be a very interesting endeavor -- and it might be a way
to provide a clear incentive to participate. LOD could be a novel type
of open-source project, one that is not only concerned with code, but
also with the underlying data. The products of this open source
project could then be used in various kinds of projects, some of them
with commercial focus. In such a scenario, being the main stakeholder
for a certain subset of LOD might become profitable, and give
incentive to improve the data provided and controlled by each
stakeholder. This business model could be similar to that of
successful open source content management systems such as Typo3 or
Drupal, where the code is free, but providing consulting and
customization for certain commercial users is based on financial support.
I know that this idea of a 'LOD brand' counters the main motivation of
most people in the community, but it might be the key to creating an
incentive structure for providing linked data, improving data quality
and actually getting people to use the data. With the current
philosophy, I see the danger of LOD staying a permanent 'proof of
concept'. The concept has been proved by now.
Mattias,
I don't think your point of view is contrarian, it is certainly quite in
line with my world view and aspirations re. the LOD effort :-)
* A good point by Giovanni is that mere interlinking of datasets was
possible since 1999 by re-using URIs, and that post-hoc mapping
between datasets was possible since 2004, when owl:sameAs was
invented. The linked data movement 'only' added the consensus that
HTTP URIs should be used, and that a HTTP GET request should yield a
small RDF subgraph, listing the RDF triples about the resource.
Surely, this is a very practical thing for many reasons, but was it
instrumental for the success of LOD?
No.
At the moment, it seems that most *useful* applications of LOD data
are based on a central triple store created by the aggregation of some
or all LOD data sources. In that case, one might ask whether the
dereferenceable URIs are really an essential ingredient to the success
or LOD, or just a 'good to have', but not essential, feature.
Like most things in the Linked Data realm, there isn't a single factor.
The success is inherently connected to recombination and meshing.
DBpedia produced a corpus of "Names" endowed with de-referencable URIs.
Thus, in a single project you ended up with a "Linked Data" meme proof
of concept based on a familiar knowledgebae (Wikipedia).
Naturally, from DBpedia emerged the LOD cloud, and from the LOD cloud we
now have a much wider corpus of "Names" and a substrate for some serious
innovation and value delivery.
De-referencable URIs, Negotable Representation of Resource Descriptions,
and other elements of the Linked Data Web's FORCE as are simply there to
be tapped by current/next generation of innovators on the Web and/or
across the Enterprise en route to solving real problems. Examples ares
would include:
1. Identity (decentralized and non-repudiatable variety via foaf+ssl
which is ultimately going to be sparql+ssl) -- then we can fix mail,
commenting and other critical aspects of the Web and Internet
2. Data Integration (across the Web, Intranets, and Extranets) --
disparate schemas and dirty data are facts of life when dealing with any
DBMS system
3. Open Data Access decoupled from Data Representation - for eons many
had to deal with XDR hell and application specific representations of
DBMS query results.
LOD makes lookups and joins smarter and more powerful. When all is said
an done, beyond storage, DBMS exploitation is about Lookups, Views, and
Joins. LOD now enables value delivery based on the aforementioned
without exposing the intricacies of the LOD mesh. Basically, our
conversation don't have to start from the technical end anymore, we
start with demonstrable value etc.
LOD is successful because it is full of pragmatists equipped with
technical skills and broad industry experience :-)
Kingsley
Giovanni:
An alternative explanation i like is
http://inamidst.com/whits/2008/technobunkum
This is the second time I see this link on this mailing list. He makes
some very good points about the importance of focusing on providing
solutions to problems, instead of becoming too tangled up in
technicalities. I also read his other text on
http://inamidst.com/whits/2008/ambient which gives a lot of insight
into why he has abandoned Semantic Web technologies. I guess the
problems he likes to see solved are too trivial to require a
paradigmatic change (such as a global trend towards RDF/OWL and
linked data). However, I would not generalize this experience to yield
the conclusion that the Semantic Web is a huge case of 'Technobunkum'
(what a silly term, by the way). The fact that not every tiny little
problem on the web might be in need of Semantic Web technologies does
not mean that these technologies are worthless. There are plenty of
real use cases in important business segments and companies where
there is dire need for such new technologies -- life science and
health care come to mind. I have the feeling that the whole web 2.0
hype of the recent years has distorted the perception of web
developers about what is actually of societal and economic importance.
Creating yet another, slightly improved mashup between your Flickr
photos, Google maps and Wikipedia might actually not be the most
important problem of the world today. And it probably doesn't earn you
money either. End of rant.
Cheers,
Matthias Samwald
DERI Galway, Ireland
http://deri.ie/
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution & Cognition Research, Austria
http://kli.ac.at/
--
Regards,
Kingsley Idehen Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO
OpenLink Software Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
