Re: Terminology when talking about Linked Data

Dan Brickley wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Damian Steer <d.steer@bristol.ac.uk> wrote:
>   
>> Historical aside:
>>
>> On 17/02/10 11:20, Hugh Glaser wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> More recently I have also badged as Web of Data;
>>>       
>> See [1], since 1998 :-) It's been used fairly regularly since then, although
>> I'd highlight [2] as a particularly significant use of the term.
>>
>> Damian
>>
>> [1] <http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html>
>> [2] <http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2006/02/my_future_of_web_apps_slides/>
>>     
>
> Yes, any use of the phrase "Web of data" that excludes or sidelines
> work like Tom Coates' here ([2]) would be ... regrettable. There have
> already been unfortuate run-ins in blog land about whether you can do
> 'linked data' without using RDF in some LOD-approved manner. There is
> much much more to 'data' than RDF (or OWL, or triples, or W3C SemWeb).
> The Web's a big place and we have to be inclusive. RDF was originally
> standardised as a metadata system, a mechanism for finding stuff ...
> whether that stuff was photos, videos, HTML pages, excel spreadsheets,
> SQL databases, 3d models. It can also be used to provide summaries or
> normalisation of some of the information held in those data objects
> too. But we shouldn't forget the original use case, nor sideline it.
> Metadata about non-RDF documents is still linked data imho: all of
> those forms of Web information are 'linked data' if we use W3C
> information-linking technology to increase their findability. There's
> more information out there than fits comfortably in triples or quads;
> some of the best information is still in people's heads, after all.
> FOAF was always blurbed as an "experimental linked information
> system"; we should have been clearer that some of that info was in
> triples, some in human-oriented documents, and some ... critically ...
> was still in people's heads. The richness comes from the interplay
> between those three forms of information. But I guess that's why I
> still cling nostalgically to the word 'information' here, rather than
> just 'data'.
>
> BTW an early and important paper in the 'web of data' line, which
> tried to bring RDF and XML together as components of a larger
> ('Semantic Web') story is http://www.w3.org/1999/04/WebData  ... it
> doesn't use the phrase explicitly (except in the url path maybe) but
> it is clear on the need for an inclusive approach.
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>
>
>   
Dan,

I have a "history" tag on del.icio.us, would be nice if you tagged some 
of your precious historic links using this tag also :-)

History is ultimately always the best teacher.

Inclusiveness vs NIH has to be the dominant mindset in the emerging 
realm of Linked Data; nothing is new under the sun, bar context.

If we improve on our historic mapping to related domains (as you do so 
well), we will be rewarded with a reduction in tutorial and definition 
burdens en route to the inevitable global epiphany re. Hyperdata.


-- 

Regards,

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

Received on Wednesday, 17 February 2010 15:03:22 UTC