Re: What Does Point Number 3 of TimBL's Linked Data Mean?

What it means now, or at any point in time, must be inclusive to new
in-development or in-use things, other wise it will never mean anything
else later down the line.

If you want it to mean a very specific set of things at any one time, then
take "Linked Data" down the standardization path and give it fixed versions
which are RECs.

I don't see anybody saying "don't use RDF" or "RDF is a bad idea for Linked
Data, use Y instead". I just see some people inferring that RDF precludes
all other things, and other people saying why should it preclude everything
else?

ps: I'd be very wary about saying that any web tech is ".. *the* universal
..", many of them are Uniform, non are truly universal, even within their
specific domains, and any such claims will always be disagreed with by
somebody as they are always untrue claims and alternatives always exist.

Best,

Nathan


On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 4:42 AM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:

> On 06/21/2013 07:03 PM, Nathan Rixham wrote:
>
>> Linked Data is a moving target, it's not Linked Data 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 etc,
>> it's a set of technologies which make it easy to have machine readable
>> data that is interlinked on the web.
>>
>
> Okay, but that is kind of like saying that the Web is a moving target
> because of the many technologies that come and go.  While that may be true,
> those technologies are not key to what makes the Web the Web. Certain key
> technologies are foundational and change little if at all: namely the use
> of URIs as the standard universal identification scheme.
>
> Similarly, although query languages like SPARQL and formats like Turtle,
> RDF/XML and JSON-LD may come and go, those technologies are *not* what
> makes the Semantic Web the Semantic Web.  RDF is *key* to making Semantic
> Web data easily machine interpretable and combinable, because it is *the*
> universal data model on which the Semantic Web is based.  It could evolve
> slowly, just has URIs are slowly evolving to permit IRIs, but and it could
> eventually be supplanted by a new standard universal data model.  But for
> now and the foreseeable future it is the standard universal data model for
> the Semantic Web.
>
>
>
>> If Linked Data is built on HTTP currently, then the media types used
>> have to be registered, which limits the set, but this set of supported
>> mediatypes can and will change over time, as will the protocols used, as
>> will the ontologies and the data, and so forth.
>>
>> You can't lock it in stone, or preclude innovation and new
>> specifications, common sense and basic web architecture entail using
>> URIs/IRIs, common protocols (HTTP), registered media types, and so
>> forth, but if a large eco system of data in a new media type is
>> developed or an older one bootstrapped and commonly supported, it's
>> going to be Linked Data.
>>
>> Interoperability, modularity, and, tolerance - they're all critical, and
>> none of them entail forever using only RDF and SPARQL
>>
>
> Forever is a long time.  Certainly the foundations of the Web and the
> Semantic Web could be re-architected or supplanted eventually.  But there
> is a vast difference between using a new a media type, a new query language
> or even a new protocol, and using a new identification scheme (URIs) or a
> new universal data model (RDF).
>
> For the foreseeable future, RDF is *essential* to the Semantic Web because
> the Semantic Web relies on having a standard universal data model, just as
> URIs are *essential* to the Web because the Web relies on having a standard
> universal identification scheme.
>
> Therefore, if you believe that Linked Data is intended to support the
> goals of the Semantic Web, or if you believe that Linked Data is "the
> Semantic Web done right", then for the foreseeable future RDF is *required*
> for Linked Data (though the data does not have to *look* overtly like RDF).
>
> We're talking about what the term "Linked Data" means *now* -- not what it
> might mean in 10, 20 or 50 years.
>
> David
>