Re: "State of the Semantic Web" - personal opinions?

Can we still speak of "The Semantic Web Community" as a (reasonably) unified
whole? Should it be?

Ca we speak of the syntactic web community? the semantic web is a rather
elusive concept. Depending on what we want to say we usually end up defining
it in direct relation to the vision of the SW. Which are the technologies of
the SW? I am not sure such a thing as semantic web technology exist. When I
hear people talking about SW technology they usually reefer to OWL, RDF,
JENA, etc, and those are just software components far from being
technologies on their own. For instance, JENA and OWL, how far could I go in
a business environment if I try to sell an application based on the so
called SW technologies. Usually I end up using standard technology, it just
happens that the final product has some "semantic features" and so I can
sell it as a product based on SW technology. the true is that the only
semantic it has is just in the use of a controlled vocabulary. I have not
seen so far a product that gets closer to the vision of the SW.

I do agree with the idea that semantic technology should help to have a more
effective and intelligent design process; but here we are again years away
form seeing it becoming a reality. The vision in this regard, software that
supports a more intelligent design, can be easily seen in  the recent movie
"IronMan". Clearly if one wants to design anything form airplanes to cars,
one would like to do it in the same way that Tony Starks designed his
IronMan high-tech suit armor, just by dragging and dropping objects. Such
vision is, IMHO, a 100% semantic web vision that brings together more than
just RDF, OWL and JENA, and JASON and etc. Can such a software idea be sold?
of course!!! even small pieces of it can be easily sold. Can these small
pieces be developed?

"No business man will pay $1.00 for a system that will tell him that his
mother's sister is his aunt, which is about all that SemWeb101 shows you.
 But show him an application that will tell him if his billion-dollar
aircraft design meets all requirements, and you'll be in for some money." I
think this is the state of the SW, it is more of a vision than a set of
comprehensive technologies that can deliver. So far, there is not even a
clear differentiation between the so called SW technologies and those
not-SW. If I were to sell an ontology, which is in theory to be a key
component of the SW, the ontology could not go any further than that... and
no matter how many axioms is has, the final product would not use the
ontology to its fullest.


Initially the Web 2.0 'movement' had little or nothing to do with the
Semantic Web (beyond the lower layers of the stack) - is there any evidence
of change there?

I think we are starting to see a nice move on that front. Bioportal is an
example of that trend. The use of web 2.0 and the involvement of communities
pf practice is clear there. Ontologies are key in profiling communities and
users in software like facebook and the like. Amazon with its
recommendations has also implemented a practical part of the vision and
mixed it with community involvement. In the future we will see more of that,
there is money there, but most of all, there are practical deliverables and
tangible outcomes.
- Show quoted text -


On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> wrote:

> In brief, some time soon I'm planning to do a moderately comprehensive,
> fairly non-technical write-up on this topic (for Nodalities [1] - has quite
> a large & varied readership, including Planet RDF :-)
> I'd like to try to be as objective as possible (personal ideosyncracies
> aside). But I'm really hesitant... I want to do the topic justice, but am
> totally ignorant of a vast amount of what's been happening in the field of
> late (and have a terrible memory!). So I would very much like to draw on
> other people's knowledge and experience, different perspectives, even vague
> intuitions on this. In short, he-elp!
>
> Please reply on-list if it's ok for direct publication (include your
> homepage URI if you want quoting), mail me personally if you have
> off-the-record comments - if I use I won't mention source.
>
> The inspiration - last month I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Ivan
> Herman entitled "State of the Semantic Web" [2] (apologies Ivan, the most
> recent version of your slides I could find online are last year's at [3],
> but I think those carry the gist). Great material, but clearly he was there
> primarily in his role as semweb lead at the W3C, though to his credit he
> went far deeper than mere cheerleading.
>
> (I too do semweb stuff as a profession, but I'm fortunate enough that the
> company I work for encourages speculative exploration - if I asserted "the
> semweb sucks!", it'd just lead to further discussion ;-)
>
> Ok, so for this as-yet hypothetical write-up, I'd like to include a few
> success stories, as well as an example or two of things that *haven't*
> worked.
>
> Now a few random areas I'd love to hear thoughts on - some of them involve
> prognostication, but I'll interpolate backwards (!)...sorry, lots more
> bullets than I initially intended - please just pick any that you feel
> strongly about! -
>
> * Obviously Semantic Web technologies potentially have a big role within
> the corporate Intranet. How are things going there?
> (Personally I'm not comfortable with distinctions between "Public Web" and
> er, "HTTP on the LAN" or even "Our Lovely Inference Engine", but for present
> purposes I'll keep my mouth shut :-)
>
> * Money! What's the current status of funding for semweb research in
> academia? Inside big corps? Gov. orgs? Funding from VCs etc?
>
> * What's the range of application of RDF like nowadays? (Obscure examples
> would be nice)
>
> * What is the significance of recent interest in Semantic Technologies
> (those without necessarily having any tie to the Web)?
>
> * How far does RDF+SPARQL (+RDFS) get us? Where might OWL(2) take us? Is
> there any conflict between these directions?
>
> * How have the Linked Data initiatives changed perceptions in the use of
> RDF?
>
> * How's the chicken? How's the egg?
> (aside - we seem to have a decent supply of data now - but where are the
> UIs/hooks into existing UIs/never-before-considered applications?)
>
> * Has the role of the W3C changed in this context over the past few years?
>
> * Can we still speak of "The Semantic Web Community" as a (reasonably)
> unified whole? Should it be?
>
> * Have the attitudes of the developer community at large changed much
> towards the Semantic Web? (Did SWEO help?)
>
> * How has/will blogging influenced the Semantic Web?
>
> * Initially the Web 2.0 'movement' had little or nothing to do with the
> Semantic Web (beyond the lower layers of the stack) - is there any evidence
> of change there?
>
> * Slightly tangential - where do you see social networking going?
> (Possibilities off the top of my head - unification of services; general
> loss of interest through another fad coming along; descent into the Web
> infrastructure)
> - supplemental: assume the fad prognosis - what'll be next?
>
> * Is there yet any compelling, user-friendly application that is solidly
> based on the Semantic Web (and within that definition I'll include linked
> data and suchlike broad Web connectivity)?
>  - bonus: if I want to show Mom how cool the semweb is, without blinding
> her with triples, where do I start?
>
> * Of the old layer cake, we seem to approaching the point where some of the
> upper layers don't seem far off being ready for prime time: Rules, Logic,
> Proof. Too optimistic?
>
> * Again with the cake: we know we need Trust - but whatever happened to
> Signature, Encryption?
>
> * Named graphs are the future?
>
> * (Summary of the last few) - are we done with new specs yet?
>
> * Any impact anticipated from HTML5?
>
> * If there was (is?) a Web 2.0 cake, no doubt it would now include OpenID
> and OAuth - how compatible are these/can these be with the semweb tech we
> know & love?
>
> * Not unrelated, there's a fair bit of similarity between OpenID Attribute
> Exchange and RDF, as well as what appears to be a parallel stack to the
> (Semantic) Web with XRDS/XRI/XDI etc. Is independent invention of this
> nature a good thing or not?
> (My mouth remains firmly shut :-)
>
> * There's always been a Semantic Web roadmap - has its destination changed?
>
> * What obstacles are there?
>
> * Event/comm-related things - IM, XMPP, Twitter even - where's the semweb
> in all that?
>
> * Mobile Semantic Web - how're we doing?
>
> * Ubiquitous Semantic Web - how're we doing?
>
> * Jim Hendler's question: where are the agents?
>
> * What are the best next actions to carry this Grand Project (tm) forward?
>
> * Loose question - while it doesn't make much sense to say when the Web
> was/is finished (2 hosts? 2 billion?), but barring disasters, on what kind
> of timescale do you think we'll see a significant qualitative difference in
> the Web at large due to Semantic Web technologies?
>
> * Anyone noticed any serendipity recently?
>
> * What questions did I miss? :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> [1] http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/
> [2] http://www.semantic-conference.com/session/723/
> [3] http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0223-Bangalore-IH/
>
> --
> http://dannyayers.com
> ~
> http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/this_weeks_semantic_web/




-- 
Alexander Garcia
http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/75943.html