Ron Wheeler wrote:
> Software Engineering is required if you actually want anything functional.
> Otherwise all you get is words which is what we mostly have now. (01)
Absolutely. But there is a difference between "heavy applications" with
"complex tools", that actually represent the results of design and
careful engineering, and hacking something with a Python workbench and
an RDB in a few hours. If the market wants cheap knockoffs, they get
what they pay for. (02)
IMO, the reason for the lack of success in the noble endeavour that is
the Semantic Web is the competing noble endeavours Google and Wikipedia. (03)
They are all about finding the information you need. (04)
The Semantic Web idea is that experts annotate documents to put their
content in a perspective of the consensus knowledge in an area. And if
what you are looking for is reliable content in any academic discipline,
this is the (long) established view of how to get it. The only
difference is that we are trying to automate the knowledge association
and selection process. The problem with the Semantic Web is that we
haven't yet made it easy for the experts to do the annotation, and there
is no existing critical mass of "consensus ontologies" that defines the
perspectives the experts want to refer to. The entry cost of doing it
this way is high. (05)
The Google idea is that software can statistically annotate documents
according to what it actually sees in them. The "semantics" of the
resulting linkages is "emergent", not "designed in". This technique
makes a lot more information accessible, because it doesn't require the
experts and the established views. But it assumes that in academic
disciplines what is actually available will be dominated by the works of
experts and by the established views. The actual statistical
performance does not support this. Many or most of the links are not
very reliable, because the published information is dominated by
students, marketers, bloggers, etc., only some of whom really are
experts. Google is very effective at indexing information of all kinds,
and the cost for everyone but the Google organization is non-existent,
but for that reason, there is a definite caveat emptor. (06)
The Wikipedia idea is that a lot of basic knowledge can be gathered in a
theoretically expert reference that is maintained by a community, and
the community will be dominated by the consensus knowledge. And that
has proved to be largely true. At the same time, Wikipedia has "thought
police" whose duty is to eliminate articles they see as self-serving or
lacking a broad community of interest and expertise. Quality has a
social and intellectual price. (07)
Which of these is the right way? All of them. Which will succeed?
Google and Wikipedia already have established themselves, but Wikipedia
will never be as broad as some would want, and Google will never be as
reliable. And OBTW, _all_ of these required some serious engineering
and some very heavy software systems design. Google, like Rome, was not
built in a day. (08)
But the Semantic Web is suffering from another malady -- infighting.
The Semantic Web is currently an "anti-social network". Ontology
development and document annotation is largely funded by
government-provided research money, and too much effort is being spent
on directing the flow of the water to the favorite mill and too little
on grinding the grain. If we really want the Semantic Web to succeed,
we have to declare some winners and some losers and get on with the
work. (See disclaimer below. ;-)) (09)
-Ed (010)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 (011)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (012)
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