Re: Hacker rally questionnaire draft, take 2

Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:
> On Friday 12 January 2007 18:13, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>   
>> The skeptics are not going to grok the Semantic Web based on what we
>> say, they are going to do so based on what we demonstrate (Dave Winer
>> demonstrated what became the Blogosphere via his Userland platform).
>> As stated earlier, Mashups drive Web 2.0, and RSS drives the
>> Blogosphere. Thus, we should produce demos and tutorials that show
>> how the Semantic Web enhances Mashups, Online Communities
>> (Social-networks, Blogs, Wikis, Discussion Forums, shared Bookmarks
>> etc).
>>     
>
> I don't think we disagree all that much. Indeed, we (as in the Semantic 
> Web community, not SWEO) need to demonstrate, and that people will not 
> grok anything by just talk. 
>
> However, what I sense now, and please do stop me if I raise a strawman, 
> is that you're quite content with demos, whereas I think that we 
> urgently need to create a genuinely useful application, and that we 
> need to do that first to open people's minds before we can go any 
> further with any education. It is difficult to reach out to a closed 
> mind.
>
>   
I am not content with "demos" :-)

 From my vantage point "Applications" and "Demos" are very subjective 
:-) Like, Data, Information, and Knowledge, it all depends on ones 
perspective. For instance, I see the Blogosphere as a demonstration of 
the "Syndication" and "Web Services" related prowess of XML. Likewise, I 
see SIOC, AtomOWL, FOAF, Annotea and/or SKOS integration when applied to 
the Blogosphere in a non disruptive way as one of several ways of 
demonstrating the value delivered by the Semantic Web.
> Now, we set the deadline for comments on the questions to tomorrow. I 
> was hoping that we could discuss the wording, so that we can solicit 
> answers to the questions themselves, and once we agree on the questions 
> and get it out, it can certainly be spread as widely as possible.
>
> Also, I agree that most of the skepticism towards RDF has been because 
> of the RDF/XML syntax, and so I would support the RDF/XML Lite 
> initiative, and I always make sure that I say in my talks that people 
> should stop thinking about RDF in XML terms. 
>   
RDF/XML's problems originate from historical intermingling of the Data 
Model and RDF/XML as the standard serialization format. If we bring more 
attention to the RDF Data Model and its association with a variety of 
serialization/interchange formats, it will go a long way to alleviating 
the Semantic Web's biggest comprehension and appreciation hurdle (IMHO).

RDF/XML is an effective way of transmitting graphs between programs, but 
N3, Turtle do a much better job of unveiling the what Triples and Graphs 
are about conceptually through human eyes :-)  People have to grasp 
concepts before they make tangible progress during the learning 
experience. This hasn't really happened re. the Semantic Web in a broad 
sense (i.e outside the Semantic Web community).



> Cheers,
>
> Kjetil
>   


-- 


Regards,

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

Received on Tuesday, 16 January 2007 15:18:45 UTC