Re: connections

On 17 April 2010 10:51, Alexander Johannesen
<alexander.johannesen@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 17:33, Lee Feigenbaum <lee@thefigtrees.net> wrote:
>>> I personally think it is the one you left out;
>> Oh, I left out way more than one!
>
> Ok, one of the many, many you left out.
>
>>>  * The tools we use to ingest and make sense of the data sucks.
>>
>> If we had compelling enough applications of the *data*, wouldn't we build
>> the tools we need?
>
> Why?

Because I want to know where the nearest kennels are, and when will be
best to plant tomatoes.

These are compelling applications - both examples very geo-oriented,
but we know how to do that.

>>> Feel free to point to systems that are fuzzy enough to deal with the
>>> onslaught of human information and create real knowledge from it. :)
>>> (My biggest contenter is still Google Search, and they do it better
>>> without all this hocus pocus RDF business)

Google do seem to have noticed that the hocus pocus (whether or not
they call it RDF) has its place. More to their credit I would say is
that they do seem to see the social stuff as useful. Google may not be
able to directly point me to the local kennels, but putting me in
touch with a person that knows the answer is certainly close to scope.

>> This sounds more like "doing something with the data we have is too
>> difficult" or "the content of the data isn't what we need [without lots of
>> extra processing" then a deficiency in the tools available.
>
> Hmm, not following you, but maybe a clarification of what "tools" mean
> to me might help; In my world, tools is the generic form of "doing
> something with the data that might solve some problem", be it
> applications, services or, indeed, the more folksy definition of
> tools.

On those points I'd have to point to the tools we already have, like a
human and a telephone directory.
More relevant to the tech, the local database.

> The Semantic Web was crafted on the potential of fixing problems a tad
> bit better than what we already had that already fixed the problems,

I disagree somewhat - would take me a while to find the exact quote,
but Tim has stated words to the effect that the semweb can make
problems previously considered impossible become a bit obvious. (A
point with which I agree strongly).

> so basically fixing a non-existent problem. It was also built on the
> promise of reusable ontologies on top of data, and even though the
> promise wasn't held the potential is still there, for sure. But we
> haven't got the tools to deal with that part of it all that took us
> (speaking in generic fuzzy terms here) by surprise;

But we (in the affluent West at least) each have the hardware,
software and connectivity to put us in the zone of making real use of
this stuff. I still don't understand why we are so slow at making it
so.

> Humans aren't strongly typed, and the data we create sort of falls in
> between strong and no type, where our tools have to do what our brains
> do with ease; fill in the gaps. But that seems like an almost
> impossible task for software at the moment *because* the breadth of
> our current SemWeb tools have far too much scope for our systems to
> deal with it, and certainly in any pragmatic form. (But I'm sure
> people will pipe up with their domain specific tools that convert the
> informolasses into domain specific nuggets of re-usable knowledge. I'm
> doing that myself, for one.)

"informolasses" goes straight into my vocab, thanks.
I suspect you're right about domain-specific tools, that reflects the
human issues, the need to solve specific problems.
While the Web of docs can be very generalist, I'm not so sure the Web
of (linked) data will be useful in the same way, at least in the near
term.
For example, when I'm in gardening mode, I want a gardening
application - that uses global data but within a locale filter.


> All this data and their weak relationships are great to play with,
> though, and it might shape things to come, but to get the masses to do
> something interesting with it you need to convince them that
> "ontology" is even a word that deserves a place in our daily
> languages. (And don't tell me linked data doesn't need ontologies; a
> kick in the shin if you do) Tough call, I'd say. If you say to them
> "model", they immediately reach for Toad or some RDBMS thingy. If you
> say "triplet" or, even worse, "tuple", they might think you're talking
> about raising kids.

Kick me in the shin - ontologies are no more and no less than shared
vocabularies through which we can communicate.

> In other words, the technology, its promises and potential means
> *nothing* when a small paradigm shift is needed.

Despite my negative comments recently, I do think that paradigm shift
is happening.

Cheers,
Danny.



-- 
http://danny.ayers.name

Received on Saturday, 17 April 2010 09:34:53 UTC