Re: Basics of Effective Learning

Sandro Hawke wrote:
>> [[I quite liked Tom Gruber's keynote on 'Social Web'. Tom tried to avoid
>> the controversial Web 2.0 term and talked rather of the collective
>> intelligence of folksonomies, tagging, blogging, etc. It was good to
>>     
>
> I liked his point that Web 2.0 is really "collected intelligence" and we
> still haven't gotten to "collective intelligence".  :-)
>
>   
>> hear a talk that avoids the unnecessary controversy on the relationship
>> between Web 2.0 and, say, the Semantic Web. Tom also talked about an
>> attempt to give a more coherent ontological model for tagging, though it
>> seems that this work is stalled due to missing people to work on it (see
>> also an earlier blog[4] he had on this for some more details). Would be
>> good to pick this up]]
>>
>> Actually, the comment on Tim O'Reilly's blog that caught my eyes is the
>> one of Steve Loughran. He says:
>>
>> "semantic web is built on ontologies and ubiquitous RDF"
>>
>> which, in this form, is incorrect and one of the 'myths' we do have
>> around SW (maybe we should make it part of[5]), namely that any SW
>> application must use ontologies, ie (according to this line of thought)
>> has to use OWL, ie, is based on complex and difficult-to-understand
>> concepts.
>>     
>
> In itself, I don't think that statement is a myth.  You can't use RDF
> without a shared understanding of what certain URIs mean, typically some
> class and property URIs.  In Tom Gruber's world, at least, that shared
> understanding is, loosely speaking, an ontology.  Strictly speaking, the
> specification that enables that shared understanding is the ontology.
> (He talked about this a bit at the keynote, but also in a document from
> 13 years ago, where I first saw his name [1].)
>
> It would be good if we could come up with a simpler, more accepted term
> for this concept.   Some options:
>
>     ontology
>     (controlled) vocabulary
>     (data) dictionary
>     (rdf) schema
>     (data structure) interface
>     language fragment
>
> Doesn't look good.   :-)
>
>     -- Sandro
>
> [1] http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html
>   
Sandro,

I am a firm believer in the use of  "target audience driven context" to 
construct my messaging.  For instance, when constructing messaging for 
the Web 2.0 community we should be able to use the things that concern 
them the most as the thrust of the messaging. Which in my opinion are: 
Blogs, Wikis, Aggregated Feeds, Discussion Forums, and other shared 
spaces (or my preference: Data Spaces) [1].

Let's take the Ontology definition and comprehension scenario, you are 
absolutely right about the value of Ontologies to practical use of RDF 
since the Instance Data has to be based on some Domain Definition that 
is comprised of Concepts on Terms and the relationships that exist 
therein [2][3]. Otherwise, the ability to query the RDF Data in an 
ad-hoc way is near impossible. It is for this reason that I use the 
Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC) Ontology [4] from 
DERI to demonstrate how Web 2.0 can benefit from the "Data Orientation" 
of the emerging "Web of Data" or "Data-Web" (Semantic Web foundation 
layer as per the Stack Cake).

SIOC is a great piece of anecdotal material for the Web 2.0 community, 
it demonstrates:
1. Why Ontologies are required
2. Why its better to Embrace and Extend (constructively) than recreating 
from scratch
3. It demonstrates the dexterity of the RDF Data Model (example the 
incorporation of all tagged content into a graph without losing anything 
[5])


Links:

1. http://sioc-project.org/files/discussion_clouds_small.png
2. http://rdfs.org/sioc/spec/
3. http://sparql.captsolo.net/spec/
4. 
http://myopenlink.net:8890/DAV/home/kidehen/gallery/my_photos/sioc_ontology.png 
(SIOC ontology visual, note this is based on the original as opposed to 
update that's imminent)
5. http://sioc-project.org/files/sioc_foaf_skos_small.png (SIOC 
integrating with SKOS for tagging)
6. http://sparql.captsolo.net/spec/#sec-external (share ontologies guide 
re. SIOC which also covers Dublin Core and AtomOWL)
7. http://bblfish.net/work/atom-owl/2006-06-06/img/AtomOwl-UML.jpg 
(AtomOWL ontology visual)

-- 


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

Received on Sunday, 10 December 2006 18:05:46 UTC