Re: Where are the Linked Data Driven Smart Agents (Bots) ?

I would look at the history of the conventional web client as a parallel to
the "semantic web."

Not long after Netscape,  it was clear that a "personal web crawler" was a
possible thing that a person could use to answer some question.  Rather
than being dependent on InfoSeek or Altavista,  you could get a much deeper
understanding than you get from Google which is so oriented to P@1.

There are things like w3mir and httrack,  and wizards code up task-focused
web crawlers all the time,  but you don't see a lot in the way for tools
for ordinary computer users to say,  crawl out the web site of some place
like BlackRock and make a list of all the investment funds they run.

Part of that is that a webcrawler is a weapon of mass destruction,  a good
client can pitch more than an many servers can catch,  so the easier
products like this are to use the more complaints you get.

Web browsers have come a long way in a lot of ways but the mechanisms for
(1) bookmarks and (2) history are not good enough,  see:  so even if you
look at that case there is plenty of data on the client,  you are not GET
spamming people,  etc.

Also:  really what is the distinction of "client" and "server?"  It is
totally practical to run (say) a Windows application on a Windows tablet or
run the same application on a $10 an hour server at AWS over Remote Desktop
protocol and then the "client" could be Linux or an Amiga or something so
long as the network is fast.




On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 11:27 PM, Krzysztof Janowicz <janowicz@ucsb.edu>
wrote:

> As such, it is hard to publish a paper on this
>> at any of the main venues (ISWC / ESWC / …).
>> This discourages working on such themes.
>>
>> Hence, I see much talent and time going to
>> incremental research, which is easy to evaluate well,
>> but not necessarily as ground-breaking.
>>
>
> Yes! I could not agree more. On the other hand, this is all about finding
> the right balance as we also do not want to have tons of 'ideas' papers
> without any substantial content or proof of concept. I remember that there
> was an ISWC session some years ago that tried to introduce such a 'bold
> ideas' track.
>
> Krzysztof
>
> On 07/06/2016 09:38 AM, Ruben Verborgh wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> This is a very important question for our community,
>> given that smart agents once were an important theme.
>> Actually, the main difference we could bring with the SemWeb
>> is that our clients could be decentralized
>> and actually run on the client side, in contrast to others.
>>
>> One of the main problems I see is how our community
>> (now particularly thinking about the scientific subgroup)
>> receives submissions of novel work.
>> We have evolved into an extremely quantitative-oriented view,
>> where anything that can be measured with numbers
>> is largely favored over anything that cannot.
>>
>> Given that the smart agents / bots field is quite new,
>> we don't know the right evaluation metrics yet.
>> As such, it is hard to publish a paper on this
>> at any of the main venues (ISWC / ESWC / …).
>> This discourages working on such themes.
>>
>> Hence, I see much talent and time going to
>> incremental research, which is easy to evaluate well,
>> but not necessarily as ground-breaking.
>> More than a decade of SemWeb research
>> has mostly brought us intelligent servers,
>> but not yet the intelligent clients we wanted.
>>
>> So perhaps we should phrase the question more broadly:
>> how can we as a community be more open
>> to novel and disruptive technologies?
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Ruben
>>
>
>
> --
> Krzysztof Janowicz
>
> Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
> 4830 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060
>
> Email: jano@geog.ucsb.edu
> Webpage: http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/
> Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net
>
>
>


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