Re: [ontolog-forum] Inventor of the Web Gets Backing to Build Web of Data

John Sowa wrote: "... my major complaint about the Semantic Web is that it 
was "too provincial".  They completely ignored the half century of work on 
software design, development, and specification that had been funded by 
income from actual money-making products."
AA: What it is really missing here: standard ontology and semantics, this we 
are steadily repeating for a long while now.
JS: "...I believe it is hopelessly counterproductive to put "web science" 
into an isolated institute where it further reduces its contact with both 
universities and industry."
AA: It is more politics than science "...This Institute will help place the 
UK at the cutting edge of research on the Semantic Web and other emerging 
web and internet technologies."G. Brown.
Just two things to mention.
First, it makes a big difference to invent the web of data or the web of 
knowledge.
Second, it is in the nature of humans to create something new destroying 
(replacing) the old things and structures. Sombart and Shumpeter formulated 
this habit as a critical socal/economic phenomenon, dubbed as "creative 
destruction" or rather destructive creation.
Lets hope that the Web Science is a next generation metascience, and Sir 
Timothy Berners Lee is going to give the world another decisive innovation.
Azamat Abdoullaev
http://standardontology.org



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@ontolog.cim3.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Inventor of the Web Gets Backing to Build Web 
of Data


> Pavithra and Cameron,
>
> I am strongly in favor of support for universities.  But at the
> same time that the Brits dumped that money on the institute for
> "web science", they were taking money away from many talented
> professors, who were working in other areas of computer science,
> logic, linguistics, and related fields.
>
> PK> But when government spends money on educational institute
> > and scientific research, it is never a waste. In fact, it is
> > a vested in interest in humanity...
>
> I agree that governments waste much more money in ways that
> are often much less productive.  But if they're giving money
> to universities, they could get better productivity by funding
> 30 separate projects than one large institute that is isolated
> from the computer science departments.
>
> CR> For me, its not about whether or not to invest in R&D...
> > clearly we need to do this.  Rather, its about what to invest in.
>
> Yes.  My major complaint about the Semantic Web has been that it
> is *isolated* from the mainstream of software design, development,
> and use.  Putting it in a separate institute just makes it even
> more isolated.  That is a terrible step in the wrong direction.
>
> Following is an excerpt from a note I sent to an email list for
> the OMG.  It explains in more detail why I believe that this
> institute is counterproductive.
>
> John
> ________________________________________________________________
>
> Since I have been working with ontologies, I'd like to make some
> remarks that distinguish the directions I have recommended from
> what has been done with the Semantic Web.
>
> As I said before, my major complaint about the Semantic Web is
> that it was "too provincial".  They completely ignored the half
> century of work on software design, development, and specification
> that had been funded by income from actual money-making products.
>
> When Tim B-L published his book, commercial web sites, large and
> small, were built around a relational database, and UML was the
> most widely used notation for specifying software.  If the W3C
> had designed their tools and notations in a way that could take
> advantage of that work and extend it further, the Semantic Web
> would have become a unifying force for integrating all software
> design and development.
>
> Instead, they ignored everything that was done before, and took
> some ideas that the AI community had pioneered in the 1970s.
> There were some useful commercial applications of those ideas
> in the 1980s, but they weren't widely adopted -- partly because
> they were isolated from the mainstream of commercial IT. Instead
> of integrating those ideas with the mainstream, the SW kept them
> isolated.  And -- surprise, surprise -- they're still not widely
> adopted today.
>
> The point I make about semantics is that it cuts across every
> aspect of system design, development, and use.  It has the
> potential for unifying all those aspects.  But you can't unify
> anything if you put it in an isolated compartment that is
> separate from the things you're trying to unify.
>
> I worked in R & D for 30 years at IBM, which had an outstanding
> research "division".  Unfortunately, being a division kept it
> divided from the divisions that developed products.  That is
> one reason why IBM had a reputation for being in the forefront
> of every major development in computer science and technology,
> but usually *second* in the actual deployment of the technology.
>
> That is why I believe it is hopelessly counterproductive to
> put "web science" into an isolated institute where it further
> reduces its contact with both universities and industry.
>
> John Sowa
>
>
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Received on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 18:31:44 UTC