Re: RDF's challenge

On 11 June 2013 23:59, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:

>
> On Jun 11, 2013, at 11:18 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>
> > On 6/11/13 11:56 AM, David Booth wrote:
> >> On 06/11/2013 10:59 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> >>> [ . . . ]  many RDF advocates
> >>> want to conflate Linked Data and RDF. This is technically wrong, and
> >>> marketing wise -- an utter disaster.
> >>
> >> I have not heard RDF advocates conflating Linked Data and RDF, but
> maybe you talk to different RDF advocates than me.
> >>
> >> AFAICT, the vast majority of RDF advocates know that Linked Data is RDF
> in which URIs are deferenceable to more RDF, but RDF is not necessarily
> Linked Data, because RDF itself does not require URIs to be dereferenceable.
> >>
> >> David
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > RDF isn't the defining characteristic when speaking about Linked Data
> outside the RDF community. It is much more palatable outside of the RDF
> community to loosely couple Linked Data (the concept) and RDF (a framework)
> which enables the construction of powerful Linked Data that's endowed with
> *explicit* human and machine-comprehensible entity relationships semantics.
> >
> > Why? Because you don't build friction with folks that are already
> familiar with similar concepts albeit described using different terminology.
> >
> > The key is to build bridges rather than impede their construction by
> enforcing world views in the most inflexible way.
> >
> > If someone indicates to you that the letters R-D-F don't work for them,
> for whatever reason, what's wrong with triangulation to the same
> destination when it's the fundamental concept that matters, not the labels
> that we slap on them at specific times in our innovation continuum?
>
> Because while the labels don't matter, to understand that these are all
> the same under the hood *does* matter. And if we keep re-branding it to
> suit some perception of fashion, we will keep reinventing the same wheel
> (but with a slightly different axle or bearing, so it can't be re-used on
> the same vehicles.)
>
> Let me put the point differently: if someone rejects a useful tool because
> its called "RDF" instead of "Foodle", without knowing squat about RDF or
> how it works, why should we care what that idiot does or doesn't do? There
> are plenty of more reasonable, intelligent or simply better people out
> there who don't react to ideas with the intelligence of a frog. Lets try
> talking to them for a change.
>

I agree almost entirely, however branding is important, and there can be a
barrier to entry to learning RDF.

I heard this comment just today, from an intelligent person, trying to
understand linked data:

"there is a lot of jargon in the community... I can't understand most of
things they are saying because of the jargon.... I need like a one page
jargon index :)"

We need a first class jumping in point, for beginners to intermediates, and
it's not obvious where that is.

>
>
> > RDF and the Entity Relationship model [1] outlined by Peter Chen in his
> 1976 dissertation are linked, conceptually and technically.
>
> RDF is also linked, in the same way and with about as much justification,
> to Codd's relational model, Prolog, SQL, virtually any graph-based
> representational formalism (UML, anyone?), semantic nets, about a dozen
> AI-KR notations dating from the early 1970s and still further to classical
> Tarskian relational logic back to the 1940s. But don't stop there. Almost
> all serious knowledge or data representational formalisms use the
> foundation model of entities standing in relationships, and data expressing
> facts about those relationships. There are books tracing the history of
> this idea back to medieval European scholastics such as Duns Scotus, about
> a thousand years in Europe, and then via Islamic scholars back another
> thousand years to Aristotle.
>
> As for actual historical influence, as opposed to re-inventing the wheel
> for the ten thousandth time, as far as I know RDF was basically a
> simplified version of the semantic net idea coming from what is known as
> logic-based AI/KR work (and OWL has its roots in description logics,
> pioneered by the KL-ONE project at Bell in the early 1980s), and certainly
> the RDF sematnics was directly built on classical Tarskian logical ideas
> (with a slight twist coming from ISO Common Logic). AFAIK, the Chen ER
> model was not involved in this at all. But as I say, this idea of
> everything being entities and realtionships has probably been re-invented
> more times that you or I have drawn breath. None of these ideas are even
> remotely new. The fact that binary relationships are enough to encode
> aribtrary relationships (of any arity) has been known since CSPeirce's
> writings in 1887; I learned that trick as an undergraduate. The ideas of
> blank nodes, and what we now call graph syntax, also come directly from
> Peirce.
>

I cant help but feel that graphs are generally better modelled than
networks on the semantic web.  What I mean by networks is the mathematical
sense, where the edges have numerical values.  The reason I think this is
important is because financial transactions, and therefore, incentives, are
well modelled by networks.  Consider google is powered by micro
transactions and bitcoin by a distributed ledger.  We tend not to model
that kind of thing so well with graphs ... at least for now ...


>
> > That association is very powerful and extremely useful in situations
> where your audience suffers from R-D-F reflux.
> >
> > RDF is useful, but it (like all innovations) has genealogy. That
> genealogy is just as important as the innovations it adds to the continuum.
>
> If you are going to do genealogy, do it thoroughly.
>
> Pat
>
> >
> > Links:
> >
> > 1. http://bit.ly/YTdz3N -- The Entity-Relationship Model -- Toward a
> Unified View of Data  (note: page 34) .
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Kingsley Idehen
> > Founder & CEO
> > OpenLink Software
> > Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
> > Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
> > Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
> > Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about
> > LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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