Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web

[John Hibbs]

Technical solutions attract money -- because so many still believe 
there *must* be a silver bullet?

What if the technology world took the approach to have a three year 
moratorium on such things as the Semantic Web? What if they could 
attract the same resouces and put those resources to put in place 
wider - much wider - application of that which is already invented? 
affordable? under-used?

Don't we need more soft power humans? More cyber-cafe's? More models 
that show concrete, tangible results? Particularly ones which were 
scaleable?

John Hibbs
http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs
At 7:20 PM +0545 10/15/04, Layton Montgomery wrote:
Reading through these exchanges and through the Technology Review 
article was my first attempt to understand what the Semantic Web 
really is. Personally, I can see clear value in this, both from the 
view of refining searches to a much higher degree than is currently 
possible; and from the view of being able to synthesize disparate 
data across web pages and computer applications. For instance, I 
might want to do identify conferences being held in 2005 in Nepal 
having something to do with the Internet. Presumably, a Semantic Web 
search engine would allow you to not only identify keywords or 
phrases, but also what type of data they are. So I would search for 
something like: "date" = "2005", "country" = "Nepal", "event" = 
"conference", and "theme" = "Internet". Of course there would need 
to be a lot of fuzzy programming behind that so that the search 
engine would identify reasonable variations of my search terms, but 
search engines today already do this, so I would not see any problem 
in this way. Web site authoring tools would be able to create or 
identify the existing files which contain the types of data in the 
web page; for many forms of data, they might do so automatically.
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Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web

[Layton Montgomery]

Reading through these exchanges and through the Technology Review article 
was my first attempt to understand what the Semantic Web really is. 
Personally, I can see clear value in this, both from the view of refining 
searches to a much higher degree than is currently possible; and from the 
view of being able to synthesize disparate data across web pages and 
computer applications. For instance, I might want to do identify 
conferences being held in 2005 in Nepal having something to do with the 
Internet. Presumably, a Semantic Web search engine would allow you to not 
only identify keywords or phrases, but also what type of data they are. So 
I would search for something like: "date" = "2005", "country" = "Nepal", 
"event" = "conference", and "theme" = "Internet". Of course there would 
need to be a lot of fuzzy programming behind that so that the search engine 
would identify reasonable variations of my search terms, but search engines 
today already do this, so I would not see any problem in this way. Web site 
authoring tools would be able to create or identify the existing files 
which contain the types of data in the web page; for many forms of data, 
they might do so automatically.

What worries me about the structure, as it is described in Andy's original 
posting, is the fact that all these data fields would be defined in other 
files on the Internet. One could have literally hundreds of links to other 
web pages to define one's data on each given web page. To load one single 
web page in your browser, your computer would need to access a hundred 
different files from all over to get all the actual bits of data it needs. 
If you cannot access a given file, then the word or phrase being defined 
will not load at all. At present, we download the html file, the various 
graphics, and sometimes a cascading style sheet. For heavy web pages, that 
in itself can often take quite a while. Coding for the Semantic Web would 
drastically increase the size of the file that contains it, in addition to 
all of this other downloading. A simple text-only web page would no longer 
be possible. At present, we often have at least the text appear, and then 
the other bits and pieces continue loading as we start to read. With the 
Semantic Web, though, the individual words in the text would be downloaded 
from multiple different files, making this impossible. They would randomly 
and gradually appear, as graphics do nowadays.

With this structure, I worry that one would need a broadband connection to 
effectively use the Semantic Web, which would further increase the digital 
divide. HTML pages would be invisible to Semantic Web applications since 
they contain none of the identifiers needed to make it functional. 
Individuals and organizations might increasingly start to write or rewrite 
their web pages with this coding so that their information would be 
identifiable to target audiences through the features of the Semantic Web. 
If such a trend were to proceed to becoming a standard for web pages, those 
with low levels of connectivity would be effectively cut off from the 
information that is theoretically available, even more so than they are now.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this is my first exploration of the 
concept and the structure of the Semantic Web, so some or all of my fears 
may be unfounded. If anybody else knows more about the technical issues 
which would have implications for exacerbation of the digital divide, I 
would be interested to hear about them.

Layton Montgomery
 /\  /\   /\   /\   /\
/ \/   \/   \/   \/   \
  /  \  //  \
  / \/  \
/ Layton Montgomery \
  Executive Secretary
  Mountain Forum
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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  c/o ICIMOD
  GPO Box 3226
  Kathmandu, Nepal
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Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving a Semantic Web

[Tom Abeles]

Hi John
You are right to speculate about these issues. Remember that old cliche, 
Be careful for what you wish, you may get it. There are many  fables 
which also echo these ideas, including Midas.

There are those who are so enthralled with the technological 
possibilities that they become irritated at those who would riaise 
philosophical issues whether it is around the "digital divide", Open 
Source, or Open Access and their variants. One can remember nuclear 
energy which was going to be so cheap that we wouldn't have to meter our 
electricity, the "Green Revolution" and the entire "appropriate 
technology movement.

As I have mentioned, elsewhere, Dr. Gelernter,  a victim of the infamous 
"unibomber", wrote that at the end of WWII science/technology had 
realized the largest dreams presented at the 1939 World's Fair and yet, 
the problems which plague humans are still with us today.

If one understands the underlying issues surrounding the arena of 
Knowledge Management, one understands, quickly, that  while technology 
is a facilitator, the problems of  knowledge access and exchange are 
primarily contextural and human, issues not resolvable by technology.

Does this mean that one capitulates? No! But what it does suggest is 
that  stringing physical and virtual wires and distributing hardware in 
remote locations bypassed by the digital highway is a simple default 
position. It is easy and safe to see and touch hardware.  It borders on 
"cargo cult" thinking. There be dragons here.

thoughts?
tom abeles
John Hibbs wrote:
Thank you Andy Carvin for a fine, fine post about an exceptionally 
complex subject - the Semantic Web. Stephen Downes has helped me along 
with this sort of thing, especially with his daily publication, 


{Plug for Downes: Nobody on this list won't already have a full mail 
box; but if ever there was a publication that deserved attention by 
innovative people, it that which Downes manages to write almost every 
day.}

But -- About the Semantic Web - Am I the only one who thinks this all 
sounds Orwellian?  Could all this end up being counter productive?

While I have written extensively that we live in a globalized and 
Googlized world, I often wonder if the attraction of all this 
knowledge sharing and inter, intra, instant, international networking 
doesn't - in the end - cause us to be too cemented to the new machinery?

When is it timely to NOT turn on our desktop? laptop? PDA? cell phone? 
iPod? pager? Did I miss something by not watching C-span? posting to 
my favorite blog? reading the political editorials? most recent 
technology magazine?

When do I get time for Sports Illustrated? Hustler Magazine? My 
grandchildren?

What is the last straw that we can put on this camel? Or our own 
individual camel? At what point do administrators and teachers throw 
up their hands and extend to the innovators the middle finger? Does it 
make for greater divides? Or smaller ones?

Is there never a time when it's okay to just go out and play?
*Nobody* knows the "answer" to these questions. I just raise them, 
partly to thank Andy and others on this list for their observations 
and commentary -- which I value and read closely. But also, partly,to 
vent my own frustration - and worry - that while this stuff is both 
fuel for deep thinking it's also an addictive that makes for fat 
arses and, maybe, less love making?

Should we, like cigarettes, put "warnings" on our packages?
John Hibbs
http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs


At 2:45 PM -0400 9/29/04, Andy Carvin wrote:
Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving a Semantic Web
http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/
The MIT Technology Review Emerging Technologies conference featured a 
keynote by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Promising 
"a one-hour talk in 30 minutes," Berners-Lee gave an animated, 
rapid-fire presentation  -- more like a 90-minute talk in 30 minutes 
-- about the Semantic Web, his latest initiative.

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Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web

[Joe Crawford]

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Andy Carvin wrote:
> fyi, MIT Technology Review has an interview with TB-L in its latest
> issue. The very first question they ask him is basically, "why is no one
> particularly excited about this new work of yours?" So the article is
> able to delve into a bit more of a detailed response than what he gave
> during his speech.
>
> http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/frauenfelder1004.asp

There's so much hype and mystique about what the Semantic Web could
be, might be, will be -- I am particularly taken with a new series of
articles (still unfolding) on xml.com about Paul Ford's work on
actually trying to *build* semantic web applications.

* Screenscraping the Senate:
  http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/09/01/hack-congress.html

* Uncle Sam's Semantic Web:
  http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/09/15/egov.html

Quoting...
"The United States government and the Semantic Web are a perfect match:
imagine all of those senators and representatives, each query-able by age,
party affiliation, bills proposed, committee membership, and voting
record. For the last few years, I've wanted to collect as much data on the
U.S. government as I could, convert it to RDF, and build a site and a web
service that make it possible to explore that data. This will be my goal
over the next year, and I'll document my progress here on XML.com."
...
"Does creating a Semantic Web of data make it easier to analyze and
explore that data in new ways? In addition to testing the Semantic Web
concept, if all goes well, I'll have a nicely organized map of the U.S.
government, structured using publicly available ontologies, available in a
single, reliable format (RDF), which anyone can incorporate into their own
Semantic Web projects. It seems worth trying."

Joe
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Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web

[Andy Carvin]

fyi, MIT Technology Review has an interview with TB-L in its latest 
issue. The very first question they ask him is basically, "why is no one 
particularly excited about this new work of yours?" So the article is 
able to delve into a bit more of a detailed response than what he gave 
during his speech.

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/frauenfelder1004.asp

--
--
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org
http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/
--
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RE: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web

[lpeters]

I am not sure I understand either. But we should be hesitant of jumping to
too many conclusions, at least just yet. Tim is clearly an intellectual
force capable of jumping over boundaries most of us cannot even see let
alone jump over. We should ask Mr. Tim Berners Lee (TBL)to be more specific
and to answer those basic questions..

For example I cannot really understand how his social networking tools would
work--how is what described below different from a listserv or an affinity
group that forms. I think that he wants to develop a system independent of
the way we humans naturally like to communicate--mimicking in the online
world what happens in the so called real world.
If that is the case how can we trust that the machines and the artificial
intelligence networks will not use highly personal information against us?
Because one of the reasons we communicate in these patterns is precisely
because we want to be cautious about information closest to us.

Surely someone as brilliant as TBL can provide some more concrete answers
and examples to help us ordinary folk out.

Relevant Quote below

"It’s also helping build powerful social networking tools --
friend-of-a-friend networks in which people write a little bit about
themselves as metadata, and connections get formed based on this
information. “Who knows what sort of Google will be built on top of this
stuff,” Berners-Lee wondered. Computers will be able to browse the Web and
find what we’re looking for based on what they know about our needs and the
descriptive metadata they find on relevant websites. “A human being browse
the Web? That will be a little old fashioned,” he joked. "

Are we heading for a situation where the web browses human beings?
Good idea for a science fiction story perhaps but we are not ready for that
yet TBL I dont think..


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Larry
Phillips
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 12:39 PM
To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group
Subject: Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web


I'm not sure if I understand the semantic web; but if I do, I don't
think I want it.

Technically, the sematic web requires meta data to be added to the url.
   In addition to complicating the url it presupposes knowing how others
will view or use the data.  Currently, meta tags embedded in the web
page meet the need of identifying and typing content.

Philosophically, rather than having content labeled with a standard
identifier, I would prefer that search engines look for content that is
relevant to the search terms.  Assuming accurate labeling the best we
could hope for is a situation similar to searches returning paid
results.  In other words, we will be dependent on the publisher to apply
the standard identifiers in an accurate and comprehensive manner.
Expecting publishers to look beyond their purposes is unreasonable and
fanciful.

What will a semantic web give us that we don't have now?

Andy Carvin wrote:
> Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web
> http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/

> But from the very beginning of the Web, Berners-Lee had hoped that he
> would be able to incorporate descriptive information into the Web’s
> fundamental design, but for various reasons it didn’t make the cut. “One
> thing I wanted to put in the original design was the ‘typing’ of links,”
> he said. For example, let’s say you link your website to another site.
> At the moment, the hyperlink connecting them contains very little
> information: just an address to get to the other website’s content. But
> Berners-Lee’s idea was to include “metadata” with each hyperlink to
> describe *the relationship* between the two sites. For example:  do the
> people linking their two websites know each other personally,
> professionally, or not at all? If they’re colleagues, how are they
> working together, and in what fields? Where are they working?

--
Larry Phillips

FutureCraft
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/~ljp

Quantum 2000: Education for Today and Tomorrow
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/quantum

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http://www.ecn.ab.ca/consumer

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Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web

[Andy Carvin]

Essentially, what TB-L is trying to do is give machines the ability to 
recognize knowledge that people intuitively have when they search for 
information or make online connections. So when you say you'd rather 
have search engines look for content based on what's relevant to the 
search terms, that's precisely what he's trying to do: to add metadata 
to websites and data so that search engine and other machine-driven 
tools have all the information necessary to make an informed judgment as 
to whether a particular search result is exactly what it's looking for.

I think part of the problem with the initiative is that they haven't 
done a stellar job providing simple, real-world examples of what the 
Semantic Web would look like. For example, Creative Commons is probably 
one of the best known examples of a project trying to apply the theories 
of the Semantic Web, but TB-L didn't even mention it; I had to throw it 
in myself just to give his very theoretical talk some grounding in the 
real world. (Well, the virtual mode, but grounding nonetheless.)

I don't think Berners-Lee expects people to do all of this metadata 
coding themselves, either; creating websites and relational databases is 
difficult enough as it is.He's working with a variety of groups to 
create open standards for describing this metadata, so eventually, web 
software and content management systems will do much of the work.

For now, I'm fascinated about all this, but I'm reserving judgment. I 
think Sir Tim needs a few more years and a few more concrete, everyday 
examples of the Semantic Web in action if the idea is going to expand 
beyond a rather technical exercise... -ac

Larry Phillips wrote:
I'm not sure if I understand the semantic web; but if I do, I don't 
think I want it.

Technically, the sematic web requires meta data to be added to the url. 
  In addition to complicating the url it presupposes knowing how others 
will view or use the data.  Currently, meta tags embedded in the web 
page meet the need of identifying and typing content.

Philosophically, rather than having content labeled with a standard 
identifier, I would prefer that search engines look for content that is 
relevant to the search terms.  Assuming accurate labeling the best we 
could hope for is a situation similar to searches returning paid 
results.  In other words, we will be dependent on the publisher to apply 
the standard identifiers in an accurate and comprehensive manner. 
Expecting publishers to look beyond their purposes is unreasonable and 
fanciful.

What will a semantic web give us that we don't have now?
Andy Carvin wrote:
Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web
http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/

But from the very beginning of the Web, Berners-Lee had hoped that he 
would be able to incorporate descriptive information into the Web’s 
fundamental design, but for various reasons it didn’t make the cut. 
“One thing I wanted to put in the original design was the ‘typing’ of 
links,” he said. For example, let’s say you link your website to 
another site. At the moment, the hyperlink connecting them contains 
very little information: just an address to get to the other website’s 
content. But Berners-Lee’s idea was to include “metadata” with each 
hyperlink to describe *the relationship* between the two sites. For 
example:  do the people linking their two websites know each other 
personally, professionally, or not at all? If they’re colleagues, how 
are they working together, and in what fields? Where are they working?

--
--
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org
http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/
--
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Re: [DDN] Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web

[Larry Phillips]

I'm not sure if I understand the semantic web; but if I do, I don't 
think I want it.

Technically, the sematic web requires meta data to be added to the url. 
  In addition to complicating the url it presupposes knowing how others 
will view or use the data.  Currently, meta tags embedded in the web 
page meet the need of identifying and typing content.

Philosophically, rather than having content labeled with a standard 
identifier, I would prefer that search engines look for content that is 
relevant to the search terms.  Assuming accurate labeling the best we 
could hope for is a situation similar to searches returning paid 
results.  In other words, we will be dependent on the publisher to apply 
the standard identifiers in an accurate and comprehensive manner. 
Expecting publishers to look beyond their purposes is unreasonable and 
fanciful.

What will a semantic web give us that we don't have now?
Andy Carvin wrote:
Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving A Semantic Web
http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/

But from the very beginning of the Web, Berners-Lee had hoped that he 
would be able to incorporate descriptive information into the Web’s 
fundamental design, but for various reasons it didn’t make the cut. “One 
thing I wanted to put in the original design was the ‘typing’ of links,” 
he said. For example, let’s say you link your website to another site. 
At the moment, the hyperlink connecting them contains very little 
information: just an address to get to the other website’s content. But 
Berners-Lee’s idea was to include “metadata” with each hyperlink to 
describe *the relationship* between the two sites. For example:  do the 
people linking their two websites know each other personally, 
professionally, or not at all? If they’re colleagues, how are they 
working together, and in what fields? Where are they working?
--
Larry Phillips
FutureCraft
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/~ljp
Quantum 2000: Education for Today and Tomorrow
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/quantum
Alberta Consumers' Association
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/consumer
Conversations about education
Ed Conversation mailing list
http://www.topica.com/lists/edconversation/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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