Introduction: Bijan Parsia

I was one of the people who made a last call objection to the Social 
Meaning section of Concepts and Abstract Syntax. I also participated in 
the tech plenary session and the Hungary BOF on all this.

I have a bit of training in logic and philosophy, and am self-trained 
in computer science.

I was tricked into thinking and writing about Semantic Web stuff by my 
good friend Edd Dumbill. Blame him.

I'm somewhat interested in clearing the air around this issue, but I'm 
generally a skeptic about the need or the likelihood of saying much 
substantial and useful about it in a general way. At least, that's my 
current default position. I think it's very easy to say something goofy 
or wrong or wrong footed and very hard to say something otherwise. Uhm. 
Ok, this is true in general, but even more so on this topic. (See! It's 
hard!) Plus, if we produce some sort of "official" document or part of 
a document, people will feel or be compelled to study it carefully. 
I've seen enough electron's spilt (and spilt plenty myself) over the 
definition of resource bit of the URI RFC to feel quite grumpy about 
such things.

I think clarifying the issue statement and providing a map of the 
conceptual space we're stuck in, plus some notion of the consequences 
of decisions and non-decisions would be useful. I also suspect that 
some substantial comment on some of the sub-issues is possible, and 
perhaps useful.

I'm very interested in the larger socio-political ramifications of all 
this, including democratization (or anti-democratization) of shared 
information, representation, and action. I like autonomy and welfare 
and like these things to be in abundance and spread around.

I hedge my bets and my poker face isn't.

I'm actually specifically a Semantic Web Research Philosopher at the 
University of Maryland. I serve on the DAML-S Coalition, the Semantic 
Web Services Initiative Language Committee, and the WSD Working group, 
and as an WebOnt alternate. Ugh.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.

Received on Wednesday, 10 September 2003 15:28:41 UTC