Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> On 11/13/12 11:12 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
>
>> Bottom line: The current SW tools and notations will survive
>> for a while, but Schema.org is where mainstream IT is heading.
>>
>> John
>>
> But this isn't the fundamental problem.
>
> The problem always boils down to webby data object representation,
> access, and relationship semantics that scales to the Web. Once in
> place, we have a functional global data space that accommodates
> intensional and extensional data interaction. Basically, we end up with
> Data as a new kind of Electricity conducted via hyperlinks.
>
> The above isn't specific to any format, as you know. It has everything
> to do with the following, functioning at Web-scale:
>
> 1. Entity Relationship Model
> 2. Entity Relationship Semantics
> 3. Instances of Entity Relationship Graphs linked across a variety of
> boundaries.
>
> The Web as it exists is evolving into what I've outlined above at
> frenetic pace.
> (01)
Yes. In general, however, we don't know what any of these relationships
really is, because nearly none of them is formally defined in terms of
any well-defined terms, and most of them are just links. Even the ones
that are in RDF are primarily written in terms that are effectively
"primitive", being linked to HTML articles that describe them in detail,
and discuss the vagaries in definition and interpretation instead of
defining them. What we are seeing is the Web version of a bunch of
student papers referencing each other, and a few reliable major works
that some of those papers are consistent with. A lot of the links are
blissfully ignorant of what Pat Hayes calls the 'Horatio Principle' --
the set of all X in my world and the set of all X in your world might be
different enough to support different universal axioms. Put another
way, IF you had usable ontologies for all the stuff that is being linked
together, the overall 'theory' would almost certainly be internally
inconsistent. So the question is whether this rapidly growing thing is
creating knowledge or just further complicating the overflow of
disorderly information. The Linked Web is going to be rather like
telephone systems of 1910 -- essentially chaotic until the perception
of the relationship between order and value overcomes the "first in
your neighborhood" syndrome. (02)
> Facebook has a Billion profiles and much more from its data space alone
> (they serve up JSON or Turtle content). (03)
And a great many utterly uninformed and uninformative postings, to say
nothing of baseless attacks and deliberate frauds. The question is:
what portion of that cacophony is signal? And how would you know? (04)
> Then you add the Linked Open
> Data cloud which is in excess of 55 Billion triples, and then close all
> of this out with instance data for Schema.org and what I am claiming is
> pretty obvious i.e., it's already happening as we reached the point of
> critical mass pass a long time ago :-)
> (05)
Oh, we have "critical mass", to be sure. The problem is to harness it
to provide controlled useful energy instead of Hiroshima (and to protect
the results from the next data tsunami, or the next "revolution" in web
technology). (06)
-Ed (07)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Systems Integration Division, Engineering Laboratory
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 (08)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (09)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J (010)
|