Re: New Scientist - We want our internet back

On 5 August 2016 at 18:06, Kevin Marks <kevinmarks@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 1:29 AM, Melvin Carvalho
> <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Many of the people in this group who have represented the point of view
> of
> > linked data imho have been treated dismissively, or sometimes with
> > hostility.
>
> Can you support this humble opinion with evidence?
>

Certainly my own experience, but my feeling is that is it mirrored by
others that have been in this group, such as, and not limited to henry
story, sarven, but I dont wish to speak for them.  I can say that the
makeup of the group started out with about 1/3 sympathetic to linked data,
but that is not reflected in current participation.  I think both of the
w3c staff would consider them supported of linked data, but actually I
think in some attempts to be 'neutral' they have gone the other direction
and created unnecessary pushback again against LD, tho things I think have
improved slightly since sandro took the reigns.


>
> My position on LD/RDF is that it is clearly a useful tool for many
> people who lie it as an abstraction; those people can process web
> pages with it, and generate new web pages for others to see which is a
> splendid thing.
>

I welcome this position.  I kind of held a similar position when I didnt
know that much about LD.  But after using it and seeing what it could do, I
have been really pleased with the time investment.  I know that open minded
people will feel the same when they see demos and features and say, "yeah,
id like to be able to do that".  The position that's really hard to deal
with is more of the kind "I know linked data, ive used it, im a veteran,
and it doesnt work", this is an unhealthy attitude, because it's wrong, and
often born of lack of experience.


>
> Where you see resistance is when it is suggested to replace entire
> working protocol stacks with multiple interoperable implementations
> with something that is slightly more convenient for such LD backends.
>

I think that's a stretch.  During the XG we had wide industry
participation, much wider than the WG.  The strong feeling I had was that
most developers coding around the social web, or around APIs were either
very supporting of JSON, or prepared to work with JSON.  The stack you
refer to, if it's what I think you mean, represents a very small user base
on the social web, but large representation in the WG.  If you are able to
accept form encoded data of the type foo=bar, and the coding barrier to
allow JSON of a similar kind is an insurrmoutnable hurdle, that leaves me
worried.


>
> >
> > I just dont think its in the DNA of most people in the LD community to
> > operate in such an environment, and many have understandably reduced
> > participation or walked away.
> >
>
> You are saying there is an RDF gene? A remarkable claim that requires
> remarkable evidence.
>
> > As a result the group lost the balance that was achieved during the XG.
>
> I have no idea what this sentence means, or how it follows from an
> assertion of genetic determinism.
>
> > This is a shame because the technology we have in this group, if working
> > together, is capable of solving hard use cases and giving the large
> social
> > silos a run for their money.
>
> The technology in this group is working together for the most part.
> Maybe the upcoming calls focused on
> https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/ can help document and
> converge further.
>

It's not simply that there are extra hoops to jump through to achieve
interop.  And from experience nobody ever jumps through any kind of hoop.

It's the reinvention of a problem space reframed in a new context, which
took about 15 years to solve the first time round.  Whether the w3c should
be incubating two of these stacks in parallel is a meta question.  I think
one person would say yes, another no.  My only hope is that it may be
another front open in order to introduce people to a slightly more
decentralized web.