RE: New semantic web related project - Finndesign Liitin

Hi Adam,

interesting thoughts and indeed difficult to have answered 'correctly'. They
will eventually need to be answered, and are even likely to change during
time and also geographically (culturally). Propably there will need to be
global rules eventually, even lasting time.

We have thought about these issues quite a lot (regarding Liitin). Below are
some preliminary thoughts, feel free to comment on them to either
consolidate or to return for reconsideration.

- Each Liitin user (= namespace owner) can store either private or public
data. Organisations may also have (pseudo) namespaces, behaving identically
but just more identifiable namespace name. You cannot interfere with other
namespaces other than view/execute/'import' to your own namespace in case
they are made public (= simple save operation)
- Format for Liitin object name is:  namespace:object-name

A) Private data. This is considered as the user's private property. It does
have all the same persistency properties as well, and the data (and methods
among them) is supposed to follow you the whole life time. In this sense, it
starts to resemble more personal memory rather than mere personal home
directory. This data could/should have strong protection (even personal
encryption hidden from any system administration), and once you die it
remains protected (or erased) unless you have specifically exported
information. BTW, private data was considered before public data as part of
"Personal User Interface".

B) Public data (= not private to anybody) needs to be free and not
copyrighted once stored to Liitin (currently LGPL v3 considered). This is
extremely important, since there is not really a ownership concept in
Liitin. You may be the originator, or a contributor, and similar things, but
in practise when you make any changes to public objects, you always save
them to your own namespace. Therefore, the connection between the namespace
and the object is very loose and should not be associated with ownership.
Say, you correct a spelling mistake and save the change. Eventhough all
public objects should be 'common property', there will be cases that
copyrights are violated or confidential information placed public by
mistake. There are in-built methods to deal with these occasions. Naturally,
they may (intentionally) break persistency if these objects are referred to
after this point of time.

Generally, there's a pretty good analogy to publishing information in
newspaper, or carving information on pyramid walls.  It is public
information thereafter - it is very difficult to undo it afterwards. "What
happends in Internet stays in Internet" :)

br, jukka




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Saltiel [mailto:adam.saltiel@gmail.com]
> Sent: 15 September 2011 14:47
> To: Jukka Tuominen
> Cc: <semantic-web@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: New semantic web related project - Finndesign Liitin
>
>
> All my data. The issue is two fold. Who am I. What data is mine.
> Although I don't pretend to have an answer to the former I think
> that most people would agree
> 1. An answer to the later has bearing on the former.
> 2. The answer to the former in so far as it is manifest in
> behaviour has bearing on the later.
>
> This is
> 1. A loop
> 2. A subtle conundrum. If one influences the other what are the
> possibilities that control and therefore influence will be that
> of an agent not myself? But I said subtle. We shouldn't assume
> that is undesirable. I drive down the street where all the other
> vehicles ...
> 3. Raises the obvious issue of data ownership. What with Omniture
> and Google analytics and so. Even the raw legal issues are
> unclear, at least to me. For instance one might think that a web
> site displayed in your browser belongs to the web site
> owner/publisher. It does. And that the data you enter into a form
> belongs to? That is more complex.
> But one thing. Anonymised data conclusions drawn at a time which
> we don't have access to, may be the very thing we need for a
> coherent picture of where we were or are now w.r.t. our intended activity.
> Personally I am very unhappy about the data matrix of social
> media but happier when I consider an intelligent environment.
> There are some complex issues here.
> Considering the huge amount of data and it's disparate origins I
> take it that your task is to mediate between sets. But note how a
> perfect memory or a memory of surprising detail (the past may be
> reinterpreted in the light of hitherto hidden information) holds
> it's own perils for human mortals. Not least that the aim of
> coherence and identity through longevity may be undermined by the
> mechanisms that attempt to establish this.
>
>
> Best
>
> Adam
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 13 Sep 2011, at 12:44, "Jukka Tuominen"
> <jukka.tuominen@finndesign.fi> wrote:
>
> > Hi all!
> >
> > I'd like to introduce you to a project that you may find interesting. It
> > didn't start as specifically semantic web related, but perhaps
> that's one of
> > the reasons that it may bring a new perspective to it.
> >
> > There are many aspects to the project, but related to semantic
> web I'd like
> > to bring forward a few characteristics that you may find of particular
> > interest.
> >
> > - Whereas software and hardware platforms come and go frequently, the
> > essence of knowledge and methods may last from generations to
> generations.
> >
> > - To be able/willing to build on top of somebody else's work,
> you need to
> > trust its future existance and predictable behaviour.
> >
> > - There are lots of great free software and utils out there
> even today, but
> > due to incompatibilities and overall complexity to setup a working
> > environment, they are often out of the reach of most of us. Or
> it's just not
> > worth the trouble. You'd rather contribute to your own field of
> expertise.
> >
> > Our project Finndesign Liitin is addressing these issues in a
> new way, yet
> > trying to keep it very simple to the user. You pretty much just walk/log
> > into a ready-made environment, and will have access to all personal and
> > public data and methods in a compatible and persistent manner.
> >
> > Please, have a look at the project page for details at
> > http://liitin.finndesign.fi
> >
> > Eventhough I'm very interested in things that semantic web is
> addressing, my
> > primary field of expertise is in user interface design
> (industrial design
> > education). Therefore I'd be very interested in your
> professional opinion on
> > how Liitin might be suitable for your needs, or how it may need to be
> > tweaked in order to suit it better.
> >
> > The project page may not cover all details, so I'd be glad answer any
> > questions.
> >
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Jukka Tuominen, Finndesign
> >
> >
> >
> >

Received on Thursday, 15 September 2011 13:09:05 UTC