Re: Vote for my Semantic Web presentation at SXSW

Sampo,

Re real world production systems read this http://bit.ly/pOneZB
There are others...

sent from my mobile device

On Aug 18, 2011 3:33 AM, "Sampo Syreeni" <decoy@iki.fi> wrote:
> On 2011-08-17, ProjectParadigm-ICT-Program wrote:
>
>> Google just bought Motorola Mobility and Microsoft is rumored to buy
>> Nokia. The killer apps for the semantic web will be apps for mobile
>> devices.
>
> But once again, is that because you cheer for SemWeb, or because you
> have some specific application in mind which would be better served by,
> say, RDF, than the existing technology like RDBMS+CSV? If you have the
> latter in mind, why aren't you rich already?
>
> Again, I really do like the idea of a Semantic Web (architecture) and
> Linked Data (data). But even after I mentioned some FOAF derivative
> being a potential "killer", the only real proposal for an application
> turned out to be "structured profiles". That is, a FOAF derivative. As
> for linked data, it was shown that yes, it is as useful as ever. But I
> didn't see a *hint* of a real life application where some other,
> existing technology couldn't fare as much or better than the current W3C
> sanctioned SemWeb framework. Nothing I would invest in, because it
> lowers the costs, gets things done, brings happiness to the masses, or
> even hold any heretofore undiscovered functionality or bling over the
> competition.
>
> This might be a tired topic already, but it's going to stay relevant
> till we actually have something to show the world; or until the whole
> idea just dies a slow death. If I had some real, final answers here, I
> too would already be rich. But I'm not. Then my ideas too stay rather
> (wannabe-) academic. Them being:
>
> 1) URI based naming of shared concepts is the biggest part. A shared,
> extensible, completely distributed and unambiguous namespace is
> something new and *highly* variable. This is pretty much the only
> new part we're delivering, so let's concentrate on that.
>
> 2) RDF/XML is just bad. The folks who came up with that should be shot.
> Repeatedly. NTriples is more like it for an early adopter, if even
> that.
>
> 2a) Standards only help if there is just one. All of the slower, messier
> and "more correct" ones should be dropped wholesale once a simpler
> one shows signs of catching on.
>
> 3) Triples are a neat model for semistructured data. What we actually
> need though is structured data. There n-ary instead of binary (yes,
> RDF is basically binary, and not ternary) works much better.
>
> 3a) This is reflected in the current query language, SPARQL. It's a
> total mess for any query you'd usually use for Big Data. For the
> latter you'd *always* use some variant of relational algebra, not
> the equivalent path query. That's just wrong, since SemWeb + Linked
> Data was supposed to deal with formally interpretable data overall,
> and not just the easiest kind of human-produced metadata, like
> manually input bibliographic references mandated by an academic's
> superior.
>
> 4) We're about semantics, so why do we not preferentially target the
> problem areas where semantics are and have been a problem in the
> past? One simple problem I've bumped into in my daily database work
> is that it's amazingly difficult and time-consuming to import and
> export stuff from/to an RDBM, because even the lowest level type
> semantics can't be carried by most export formats. Where's the
> SemWeb solution to that? That's for certain a problem that is being
> experienced every day by at least tens of thousands of people, it
> has to do with (granted, low level) semantics, yet there is no
> commonly accepted solution.
>
> You'll probably have many other examples like that. Which is good.
> What is bad is that we don't seem to be targeting/solving them right
> now. Even now, it seems to be more about the infrastructure than
> the final application.
>
> 5) As another example of how SemWeb could make a difference, it's
> pretty high on distributed extensibility. Compared to the
> alternatives like plain XML, and in particular most of the lesser
> protocols. Can we not find the *concrete* fields where that is at
> demand? EAV/CR already pretty much addressed that with polymorphic
> medical records, very much in the vain of heterogeneous
> triple-relation vein. So why aren't we following and bettering that
> approach, actively?
>
> 6) If we're doing metadata, why can't we do meta-metadata and beyond
> more effectively? Why is the reification issue so bogged down? I
> mean, there's a huge use case for temporal (even bitemporal) data
> out there, provenance, (cryptographically certified, or
> PKI/WoT-derived) trust, disjunctive knowledge representation, or
> whatnot, out there.
>
> I sort of think, after the quad vs. triple debates, that much of
> this could be dissolved simply by abandoning the triple model, while
> staying with a shared, distributed, vocabulary for predicates
> (triples)/column headers (the n-ary relational model).
>
> And so on. I'm pretty sure that we could do better even at the
> infrastructure level of SemWeb. It's just that first and foremost we'd
> need some real applications which are well targeted, and can then drive
> the rest of the work. Both in money, and in user feedback. Not perhaps
> "killer apps" per se, but useful apps which uniquely leverage the
> semantic web and couldn't exist without it.
> --
> Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - decoy@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front
> +358-50-5756111, 025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
>