Dan, (01)
I'll start with your point near the end: (02)
DB> I have a feeling we had this conversation a while ago on onto-std (are
> complete archives online anywhere btw?), and I argued that 'baby
> steps' were just what was needed if Web tech companies were going to
> use RDF.
>
> You suggested something similar yourself here,
> http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/onto-std/mailarchive/0188.html (03)
Thanks for dredging up that note from 1998. I'll quote what I said: (04)
JFS> Frank Olken's talk was about the Resource Description Framework (RDF),
> which evolved from the Meta Context Framework (MCF), which was developed
> at Apple by R. V. Guha, the former associate director of Cyc, who is now
> at Netscape. One of the other people involved at Apple was Larry Tesler,
> who was the coauthor of the first paper that Roger Schank published
> on his conceptual dependency theory (at IJCAI in 1969). Given that
> heritage, it is not surprising that RDF happens to be a semantic network
> that could be translated directly to a subset of conceptual graphs.
> RDF has now been adopted by the W3 consortium as the primary language
> for specifying resources on the Internet. (05)
Frank's talk made it sound pretty good, and he showed the abstract
syntax, which was quite clean. He didn't show the actual details
of what RDF looked like when you added all the angle brackets. (06)
In any case, I have no objection to using useful subsets of FOL for
any purpose whatever. In fact, I strongly encourage people to use
the simplest approach that solves their problem effectively. My
main objection is that RDF isn't embedded in a semantic framework
that supports a multiplicity of subsets for various purposes. (07)
DB> The main difference today is the scale of public - and often linked -
> RDF data that's out there; rather than any rich tooling or powerful
> AI, RDF is today interesting in large part by virtue of the many
> datasets available as RDF. (08)
Any resource that large is valuable. At our VivoMind company, we hold
our noses and import RDF resources into more efficient representations. (09)
DB> If you believe a different technology design would get faster adoption
> or be otherwise more beneficial to humanity, I hope you submitted a
> position paper to the upcoming 'RDF Next Steps' Workshop -
> http://www.w3.org/2009/12/rdf-ws/cfp --- it might not always seem
> that way, but W3C is an organization that can change direction when
> sufficient evidence is assembled. (010)
I'm not a W3C insider, and I feel that any paper I presented would
have as much impact as another snowflake in a storm. (011)
At VivoMind, we're working our way through one contract at a time and
building up our technology. I've been publishing papers and giving
talks, but I think that the most effective way of convincing people
is to show them that the better way works better. (012)
For some examples, see the following slides: (013)
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/pursue.pdf (014)
There will be more to come. (015)
John (016)
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