the semweb paradigm shift

(posted as comment)

Thanks. Yes. It was your comments regarding this at ISWC in Sanibel  
that led to the name of my blog :)

I've struggled over the last few years trying to describe this dual  
nature in layperson terms, and have a handful of phrases I return  
to ... "there is no box" (when talking to object-oriented folks,  
trying to get them to stop thinking in objects) or "the pick-up  
sticks" nature of triples, as though each triple were a popsicle  
stick, and "classes" were a toy log cabin made from them. You can  
pull apart the log cabin and make a new one with the sticks and  
there's no information lost... you can even make ten log cabins (at  
the same time) with the same sticks. Too often, it leaves people  
scratching their heads and not sure where to start.

It's similar to the paradigm shift of object-orientation. Simple  
enough to describe, but it requires more hand-holding than might be  
apparent at first.

I'm betting there's a decent emerging market in "semweb mentoring"  
because of this, similar to the OO mentoring market. Such street- 
level mentoring sessions could prove very useful to the adoption of  
semweb techniques.


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Timothy Falconer
www.bigfractaltangle.com
610-393-1889 (mobile)

Immuexa Corporation
www.immuexa.com
610-797-3100 (voice)
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On Jan 5, 2006, at 5:13 PM, timbl@w3.org wrote:

> A new comment has been posted on your blog Big Fractal Tangle, on  
> entry
> #550 (getting the semweb exactly wrong).
> http://bigfractaltangle.com/archive/2006/01/02.jsp
>
> IP Address: 128.30.5.221
> Name: Tim Berners-Lee
> Email Address: timbl@w3.org
> URL: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee
>
> Comments:
>
> TimF, good article.
>
> Glardo talks of the Semantic Web as  "vague concept" when there is  
> an increasing number of specs out there and in use.  The Sem Web  
> stack roadmap has been around for many years, and has been (in  
> large granularity) stable, and the layers have been deevloped and  
> standardized one after the other.
>
> I guess the whole idea of having local consistency but no global  
> consistency in a system of interconnected documents is a pardigm  
> shift. It is difficult to understand.  Like the WWW, you can't  
> describe it in pre-web concepts.  It isn't the push for one  
> monolithin ontology.  It isn't a fuzzying up of logic so that  
> inconsistencies don't exist.  It is a fractal system on some  
> global, some local concepts and all scales in between.  I talked  
> about it this at ISWC in Galway, but haven't written it up in detail.
> http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Fractal is sort of in the area.
>
> I remember people who were just as vocal about the WWW, saying that  
> the lack of overall structure would just be a total mess, and that  
> the possibility of dangling links would be intolerable.  They  
> underestimated the benefit of connectivity, the incentive to become  
> connected, and their ability to put up with a (valuable) mess.