Re: Have you seen this story?

Aldo Bucchi wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I didn't find that post even challenging ( and as some of you might
> know I really like to argue ), because it makes a fundamental mistake
> and all drips from there:
>
> Do the manufacturers of, say, a new form of carbon nanotubes, use it
> as material for their own tools?
>
> Well, the answer is: not necessarily (and most probably, not at all).
> At least not in its raw form. It needs processing, it might be more
> expensive and the tools probably won't make the job better than the
> old ones.
> But the material is still better than alluminium, but tools are
> complex and require other skills that these developers need not
> necessarily have. It needs to take its place on the low level of a
> complex industry and value will eventually flourish.
>
> This is not different than Linked Data in this context.
> So, why can someone come to such blunt observation by relating creator
> dogfooding to the ultimate value of the technology?
>
> One could argue that this is closely related to the semantic "curse".
>
> The answer appears when you try to answer this simple question:
> * How is this material better?
>
> Which inevitably leads you, at least, to:
> * What do these materials have in common?
> * What specific qualities of value, present in both, are being improved?
>
> We only recently did that for Linked Data!
> So, the fundamental and shared flaw here has been to attribute a
> "magical", one-of-a-kind nature to something instead of characterizing
> it in terms of the previously existing alternatives, which results in
> confusion and... well, what do you expect if we start from there ;)
>
> He might be right that there were mistakes, but the real flaws were
> related to non-specific communication from the SW community ( there
> was not clear definition of the "what is this", "what does it compare
> to" and "why its better" ) and then a lack of deep analysis on part of
> the writer, who got stuck in his myopia and is calling carbon nanotube
> developers "snake oil" salesmen because they don't use the material in
> their labs.
>
> However, I do believe in dogfooding and I do it mostly for personal
> purposes. But one thing is to support it, another to demand it.
>
> OTOH. I like to think that these weren't mistakes. I mean, that the
> time this project took to lift off due to poor communicational
> strategies was not in vain.
> It would have been awfully hard and controversial to explain Linked
> Data in terms of distributed database technology back in the days.
> While it would have been certainly understood by a much larger
> audience, in terms of its development it probably would have entered a
> state of enthropy and evolved into several JSR kind of process, not to
> mention strategic oppositions from industry leaders and the inevitable
>  competition ( which, when it comes to standardization processes, is
> not usually welcome ).
>   
Aldo,

No argument re. the above, as you know anyhow :-)
> In more concrete terms. We didn't give M$ a chance to create "RDF-MS
> Edition" by staying off the radar.
> ( I hope so )
>   

Hmm. ADO.NET's Entity Frameworks is RDF-MS salvo #1

Project "M" is salvo #2.

They get it right at #3 and by then it will be them playing well with 
the Linked Data Web.

IE is no doable on the Linked Data Web :-)

> Semantic was a great codename, but for the wrong reasons!
>
>   
Great codename for a great Thing.
Stinker of a name for discerning meaning of the Thing :-)

Anyway, Semantic Web issues are now "water under the bridge" in my world 
view, the big MO is behind Linked Data and we should simply carry this 
into related and vital realms such as OWL (the TBox side is very 
important), but do so with pragmatism and coherence. We know this works, 
based on the Linked Data journey experience.

This community has succeeded were alternative approaches have failed. We 
must never forget that when moving forward.

Kingsley
> Regards,
> A
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Tom Heath <tom.heath@talis.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hi Daniel,
>>
>> 2009/4/9 Daniel Schwabe <dschwabe@inf.puc-rio.br>:
>>     
>>> Dear all,
>>> this may be old stuff, but I was surprised to read
>>> http://www.intelligententerprise.com/blog/archives/2009/02/semantic_web_sn.html...
>>>       
>> Me too!
>>
>>     
>>> He does have some points...
>>>       
>> In 99% of cases with respect to me he doesn't ;)
>>
>> As I say in my response on his blog (copied into that post of mine
>> that Juan refers to) I agree that we, the Semantic Web community, have
>> not always done as much as we could in the dog food department, but
>> that has been changing rapidly since 2006 and we should keep
>> up/increase the pace.
>>
>> I won't comment on that blog post any further here; it's already
>> sapped too many hours of my life :)
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Tom.
>>
>> --
>> Dr Tom Heath
>> Researcher
>> Platform Division
>> Talis Information Ltd
>> T: 0870 400 5000
>> W: http://www.talis.com/
>>
>>
>>     
>
>
>
>   


-- 


Regards,

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

Received on Thursday, 9 April 2009 19:09:51 UTC