Re: [Semantic_Web] Re: web to semantic web : an automated approach

I might add that WolframAlpha is probably, given that it's based
somehow on Wolfram's "New Kind of Science", a lot of hype with little
substance. At best, we can get some good (but finite) scientific
data-sets of it and a way of computing arithmetic over it, and we will
probably have to reformat somehow these datasets to RDF and OWL.

WolframAlpha is unlikely to "compute" the answers to any questions
besides those of strictly scientific and matehmatical nature that
Wolfram has hand-curated data-sets for. The problem with WolframAlpha
is that, at least in press releases, it's based on NKS ("New Kind of
Science"), which is basically a informal rehash of fairly well-known
results in cellular automata (one or two interesting results buried in
hundreds of pages of poorly edited text) with a lots of speculation
added on and displaying a relative lack of knowledge of the history of
AI and simulation, which has been practising a "new kind of science"
for about 50+ years before NKS. While Mathematica is a good product,
NKS is not taken seriously as a theoretical framework, partially
because scientists have been doing simulations and cellular automata
work for decades.

Given Wolfram's dismissal of the Semantic Web [1], he probably doesn't
 use standards and take existing Semantic Web work seriously and then
claim to be a genius. More likely path to success is to convert
whatever Wolfram produces into something like Linked Data, keep doing
the honest and hard work of producing more standard-compliant Linked
Data, and produce useful applications on top of community-driven data.
That's sensible, and it's how the Web worked.

[1] http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 4:53 AM, Semantics-ProjectParadigm
<metadataportals@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ray Kurzweil's take on Stephen Wolfram's NKS is worth looking at.
>
> The complexity of the web is of a higher order than that e.g. of quantum
> physics and string theory, because it deals with data and information, and
> not necessarily with the observable universe and the observers therein.
>
> The semantic web goes beyond the web in terms of its order of complexity.
>
> It will take many more years of hard pure and applied research in
> neurobiology, mathematics, physics, linguistics and related fields to come
> up with the interdisciplinary field of science to address the issues of the
> semantic web in a unified way.
>
> But Wolfram|Alpha might just be the jolt required to stir up the applied
> mathematics research field to start looking into new areas of search,
> algorithms and formal systems to get to the next level.
>
> Milton Ponson
> GSM: +297 747 8280
> Rainbow Warriors Core Foundation
> PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
> Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
> www.rainbowwarriors.net
> Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for
> sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide
> www.projectparadigm.info
> NGO-Opensource: Creating ICT tools for NGOs worldwide for Project Paradigm
> www.ngo-opensource.org
> MetaPortal: providing online access to web sites and repositories of data
> and information for sustainable development
> www.metaportal.info
> SemanticWebSoftware, part of NGO-Opensource to enable SW technologies in the
> Metaportal project
> www.semanticwebsoftware.info
>
>
> --- On Wed, 4/15/09, Thomas L. Packer <tpackers@byu.net> wrote:
>
> From: Thomas L. Packer <tpackers@byu.net>
> Subject: RE: [Semantic_Web] Re: web to semantic web : an automated approach
> To: semantic_web@googlegroups.com, metadataportals@yahoo.com
> Cc: "'Semantic Web'" <semantic-web@w3.org>, "'Andreas Langegger'"
> <al@jku.at>
> Date: Wednesday, April 15, 2009, 6:33 PM
>
> Regarding the comment about Google being the current best system … You’ve
> all probably heard of Wolfram Alpha by now.  But just in case you haven’t …
>
>
>
> http://www.twine.com/item/122mz8lz9-4c/wolfram-alpha-is-coming-and-it-could-be-as-important-as-google
>
>
>
> http://www.wolframalpha.com/
>
>
>
> http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/
>
>
>
>
>
> TLP
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
>
> From: semantic_web@googlegroups.com [mailto:semantic_web@googlegroups.com]
> On Behalf Of ?????? ????? (ravinder thakur)
> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 8:44 AM
> To: metadataportals@yahoo.com
> Cc: Semantic Web; semantic_web@googlegroups.com; Andreas Langegger
> Subject: [Semantic_Web] Re: web to semantic web : an automated approach
>
>
>
>>>>>What sort of stuff does a linked-data space enable? What sorts of
>>>>>things can you _do_ with a linked data graph that you couldn't do
>>>>>before?
> A lot depends upon the kind of data we have. Assuming we have the requisite
> data i would expect best system to give answers to queries like "world
> population in 1968" as  3.5 billion and not something like this (the current
> best system). How good and confident a system is which says he has found
> 489,000 matches for a simple one word question like this. The reason for
> this is the underlying architecture used to process the data. Unless that
> architecture is moved form a word analysis based system(pagerank etc) to one
> based on meaning (SW) there isn't much scope to improve.
>
>
>>>>>Where are the real, working, non-hypothetical applications I
>>>>>can play with now that use say the linked-open-data space?.
> There isn't any real semantic web application that i know of. Please do let
> me know if anyone knows one.
>
>
>>>>>How do we get people excited enough about these things to invest the
>>>>> time in
>>>>> making their data assets available in this way on the web? These are
>>>>>the questions I personally need help with.
> The point is data owners wont be doing it unless they find some monetary
> benefit in this. One or two might share, but there will always be a bigger
> proportion that wont be sharing their data. But the point is why should we
> wait for others to share their data. Why not create our own semantic data ?
> If the approach of convincing people to share their data is not working why
> not take the other one or even better why not use both the approaches. We
> only stand to gain with these approaches.
>
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Received on Thursday, 16 April 2009 10:16:05 UTC