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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Content-wire Research" <editor@content-wire.com>
To: "Paul Tyson" <phtyson@sbcglobal.net>; <semantic-web@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 2:14 AM
Subject: Re: "State of the Semantic Web" - personal opinions?


> Danny, Paul and all
>
> Hopefully useful discussion, thanks for opening it up - I think we all 
> have different views of what semantic web is
> I take the opportunity to sell our bit of perspective
>
> (note our forthcoming workshop below, and please let us know if someone 
> wants to jump on board and give us a hand here
> http://sites.google.com/site/humanfactorsandsemanticweb/Home)
>
> I am very interested in the points Paul T makes below. In a way its kinda 
> true, what you say, that at the moment it looks a bit silly
> in another way it's kinda not true. Let me explain what I see.
> What I call 'semantic web' is still a bit of a vision (TBL vision perhaps, 
> expanded)
>
> That is: I can log onto the web, and using a smart and user friendly 
> interface and query all the data that exists online in any way I wish, 
> including the relationships between data sets. In addition, I can search 
> for qualitative/fuzzy terms.
>
> For example: how many cities of more than 100.000 inhabitants exist in 
> Europe?
> (and reason with the result, for example: for each city over 100k, 
> calculate the ration nr of vehicles per person/CO2 density etc)
> or
> How many companies are hiring people with my skillset in the UK? (and 
> automatically parse the emails and send my cv to all)
> or
> where can I find the nearest (relative to) producer of xyz goods? (produce 
> a report ranked based on different criteria incl prices)
> or even more simply
> How many people on this list are intersted in UI for semweb? of these, how 
> many have replied to my emails, how many I have met already and
> how many are looking for project partners? (sad I cant do that yet)
>
> At the moment, the following problems exist (probably more, but for 
> simplicity)
>
> 1. not all data is on the web
> 2. not all data on the web is valid/updated
> 3. not all data which is valid and updated is expressed in a format that 
> can be intelligently queried by a browser (that I can download and run)
> 4. the current data representation and querying technologies (rdf. owl and 
> sparql) are not necessarily the most efficient way to achieve such 
> capabilities
> 5. even semantic browsers do not offer inteligent reasoning capabilities
>
>
> So I see two sides to the problem -
>
> a) one is the data representation. How can I, mere mortal 'business 
> entity' (presumably I hold data and publish it on the web) make my data 
> available and suitable for intelligent querying? Where is the website that 
> can digest my data and produce god valid xml/rdf (external) representation 
> (a la calais type, but even more usable).
>
> Lets not forget that organizations are just coming to terms now (policy, 
> technology, budgeting, human resourcing etc) with putting their stuff on 
> the web
> People are still very cautious and uncertain about web publishing, 
> especially when it comes to business data.
>
> Semantic web technology is currently a geeky affair. But can you see the 
> BI (business intelligence) potential in there? If you had all the data
> available on the web, validated and ready to be queried at your 
> fingertips, would you not be able to save time and money in your decision 
> making?
>
> b) the other is building these intuitive  intuitive/usable/robust search 
> interfaces which can be queried using formal, semi-formal and natural 
> languages
> (possibly combined)
>
>
> As for the requirements of the aircraft, I am not sure a semweb 
> application would be really  be the answer in the first place
>
> Requirements for aircraft only minimally depend on the data available on 
> the open web (unless you can dynamically and selectively parse and 
> aggregate from the web an ontology, but thats really a bit far ahead), 
> unless you are thinking of deployment over intranet. Even so, I think what 
> you are after there is a 'knowledge engineering' function (make sure the 
> data/process structure is aligned and synchronised) not sure if I see that 
> as a core semweb functionality, although I am sure it can be used to 
> support such a capability.
>
> Just another two cents (I am in the UI camp, ready to work on that front)
>
> Paola Di Maio
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Paul Tyson" <phtyson@sbcglobal.net>
> To: <semantic-web@w3.org>
> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 11:11 PM
> Subject: Re: "State of the Semantic Web" - personal opinions?
>
>
>>
>> What a beautiful invitation, Danny!
>>
>> From my sliver view inside a typical American corporation, semantic web 
>> has a long road ahead.  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 
>> rehttp://sites.google.com/site/humanfactorsandsemanticweb/Homequirements, 
>> and you'll be in for some money.
>>
>> As with all standards that enable information owners to control their 
>> information, the semantic web profit model is elusive.  When tools for 
>> knowledge representation and exchange again become commodities (as they 
>> were for most of the Gutenberg age), the market will encourage people to 
>> compete on their ability to think and provide value, instead of just 
>> charging license fees for locking up your enterprise data.  On the other 
>> hand, since semantic web content is, ultimately, the distilled product of 
>> thinking, maybe license fees won't go away, because it is often easier to 
>> pay than to think.
>>
>> The semantic web is what we have all been groping for since the first 
>> computer program was written.  We didn't want text processors; we wanted 
>> thought recording and retrieval tools.  We didn't want computer-aided 
>> drafting programs; we wanted to create models from our imagination.  But 
>> we are still in the firm grip of paradigms meant to encode letters and 
>> lines in computer memory.  These paradigms are huge sea anchors holding 
>> back progress of the semantic web; and they are made more powerful by the 
>> business investment (and inertia) in applications that embody those 
>> paradigms.
>>
>> Semantic web is a tough sell.  The business man, nor the common man in 
>> the street, really doesn't care how the application is built, as long as 
>> it meets his needs.  Returns on semantic web investments will be slow and 
>> diffuse.  The semantic web is like the proverbial elephant--a lot of 
>> different things, not the same to everyone.  Part of it is patched on to 
>> the old web to provide additional functionality; part of it is webified 
>> AI; part of it is just common sense (universal identifiers for resources? 
>> what a concept!); part of it is greenfield technology.  So what are you 
>> selling, and to whom?
>>
>> Good luck with your article. I look forward to reading it.
>>
>> --Paul
>>
>> Danny Ayers wrote:
>>> In brief, some time soon I'm planning to do a moderately comprehensive, 
>>> fairly non-technical write-up on this topic ...
>>
>

Received on Wednesday, 2 July 2008 06:27:08 UTC