Re: "PICS 1.x Changes to support digital libraries (& signatures)"

I came to PICS in the mid 90's from the perspective of mass exclusion. It was a time when the Internet was first being put into libraries and schools, and I was on a technical advisory committee that was seeking solutions for filtering that didn't involve running every web site request through the state's office of attorney general for approval. (Such were the absurdities at the time.) If I had known that technology was a precursor to RDF, I would have kept tracking it after I left the service of public libraries. 


Peter

On Aug 31, 2011, at 7:06 PM, "stuart.weibel@gmail.com" <stuart.weibel@gmail.com> wrote:

> I remember this quite differently.
> 
> PICS was an early attempt at creating a technology that would enable the selection, rather than a mass exclusion of content, and thereby provide a means of averting government intervention. Or do we believe that having the means to keep pornography out of middle schools is in all cases a bad thing?
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> As it happens, PICS was the first step into web technology that we now think of as semantic web technology. RDF emerged directly from that first admittedly short sighted, attempt at labelling the nature of content. It may have been short sighted, but it was in no sense an attempt to subvert the mission or perogatives of libraries. There was then a growing alarmism about managing content online (that of course, persists today), and PICS provided a measure of cover for the community to say... yeah, we know there is a problem and we're working on it.  It bought time.
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> one person's perspective
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> stu 
> 
> On , Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:
> > It's good to see that something positive might have come out of PICS. At the time it was a full-on affront to libraries, basically backing up the government position that censorship of the Internet was something to build into the technology. I'm glad the W3C got out of that business!
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> > I agree with Simon that the use of provenance in PICS was interesting. PICS was designed for third-party labeling of web sites, something still not supported but which could be useful for a lot of different functions that resemble what we have today with many social media. With the PICS censorship focus it was billed that different groups, e.g. churches of different faiths, could create their own set of PICS labels so that their members could follow the "right thinking" of that group. Ah, those were the days!
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> > kc
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> > Quoting Dan Brickley danbri@danbri.org>:
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> > I have a growing interest in Web history, and periodically stumble
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> > across interesting old docs from the '90s.
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> > Here's today's: http://www.w3.org/PICS/970113/DigiLib/pics970113.htm
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> > It introduces some requirements from the Dublin Core community to
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> > W3C's PICS effort. This PICS-NG was later rebranded 'RDF'.
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> > I found this after reading the nice writeup at
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> > http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891826-264/how_the_w3c_has_come.html.csp
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> > and dug for evidence that W3C has always loved linked library data.
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> > Copying Eric Miller and Ralph Swick, who are old enough to remember
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> > when SPARQL servers were called "label Bureau"...
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> > cheers,
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> > Dan
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> > 
> > -- 
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> > Karen Coyle
> > 
> > kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> > 
> > ph: 1-510-540-7596
> > 
> > m: 1-510-435-8234
> > 
> > skype: kcoylenet
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> >

Received on Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:34:44 UTC