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Re: [ontology-summit] [strategy] Blank Stares and Semantic Technology: A

To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Duane Nickull <dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2011 11:42:34 -0800
Message-id: <C99BC6AA.161E5%dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
I had a 6 hour conversation on the topic of ontology work and its’ importance last night with a Vice-Chief of NORAD’s Maritime Defense wing.   It is extremely important when talking to non-technical audiences to help them understand the main concepts within the Ontology field in terms they can relate to.  A lot of time, abstract thinking is not necessarily a strong suite of someone who works in tactical field positions.  Nevertheless, with practice comes knowledge and being able to quickly judge your audience and adjust accordingly is not confined to the realm of presenting ontology work.  The same exists with Computational Intelligence, swarm grammars, negation operators and a plethora of other topics.

Adam Pease and John Sowa both have great slide decks that I have used parts of on occasion that IMO reduce a lot of FUD.  Is anyone aware of an Ontology 101 slide deck linked from this forum?  I have to send them some information and am looking for a good deck or paper to to introduce the topic gently.

Duane


On 3/8/11 10:49 AM, "Bart Gajderowicz" <bgajdero@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The point I'm making is that in order to reduce blank stares, promote
ontologies and increase adoption of semantics, we must
 - speak our audience's language
 - promote the semantic technologies they have adoptes on mass, even
if we don't agree with those technologies 100%

Some responses....

==============================
JS:
There is a box labeled RIF, but no tools to support it.

BG:
Although there isn't any RIF reasoners, there is a formal mapping
algorithm from RIF to OWL2 RL and vice versa, so
technically any OWL2 RL reasoner should work on RIF.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-rif-owl-rl-20100511/



==============================
BG:
Open Data is an opportunity to promote semantics as well. The OpenData
repositories, free and pay-per-use, are growing.

JS:
Yes.  But they're not using OWL or any other ontology tools.

BG:
The people promoting the use of ontologies (us on the ontolog list)
should make it easier for others to incorporate semantics. That means
building tools that cater to their technology/system, satisfy their
exact need, and most importantly, speaking their language.

We should be promoting projects like this more, even though they may
not be full ontologies.

http://metaquerier.cs.uiuc.edu/

http://www.technologyqw.com/736-how-semantic-search-is-redefining-traditional-social-media.html




==============================
BG
Develop/promote the tools that allow them to work with semantics in
one shape or another. Whether it's  OWL, RDF, etc, these can be the
steppingstones to the acceptance of ontologies like SUMO and Cyc.

JS:
Just look at Google -- they're the biggest web company on the planet,
but they don't use the Semantic Web.  They use JSON instead of RDF.
...
JSON is another compact and readable notation that is familiar to
every web developer.  But the Semantic Webbers ignored both of them.
They chose the most inefficient and unreadable notation ever inflicted
on poor innocent programmers.

PH:
DF was developed 1999-2004, JSON in 2006, so it was hardly a case of
'ignoring' it. The RDF revision now under way has JSON integration as
a top priority and one of the first three action items.

BG:
Originally JSON was _javascript_ specific. It's adoption, I believe, has
come from ease of readability and integration with _javascript_. Due to
so many web applications adopting AJAX, it is much easier to share
data passed with JSON than XML. XML needs to be parsed, JSON is ready
as a native object in _javascript_. Before the success of AJAX, there
was no real need to use it over XML, beside readability by humans.

As Pat pointed out, JSON is now being incorporated into RDF. People
simply have many more uses for RDF than a full ontology, whether it is
in RDF, OWL, LISP, KIF, etc., but the technology is easier to grasp,
and reduce blank stares. I think we need to change this. If it means
supporting semantic technology in popular forms, than be it. Dropping
OWL documentation in front of them won't convey the power of a full
ontology over a hacked process their developers put together to prove
an ontology is not needed.

>
> Look at IBM Watson.  IBM didn't use RDF or OWL.  To represent
> their ontology and knowledge representation, they use UIMA,
> which has a more compact representation than RDF or OWL.
>
> Until the Semantic Webbers wake up to reality, I have no
> hope for them.
>
> John
>
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--
Bart Gajderowicz, MSc.
Ryerson University
http://www.scs.ryerson.ca/~bgajdero

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