Re: The need for RDF in Linked Data

On 06/18/2013 05:58 AM, Norman Gray wrote:
> I've given a couple of lectures on 'the semantic web and linked data'
> to librarians/archivists/museum people.  They're interested^Wobsessed
> by structured information, but largely uninterested in technology as
> such.  They rather glaze when I talk about RDF and ontologies, but
> they _get_ Linked Data when I phrase it as 'the linked data web is
> the web for machines; it has the same good/bad/pragmatic
> sociotechnical features as the human-readable web, but because it's
> all RDF rather than all HTML, the machines can follow their noses
> just like we can on the human-readable web'.
>
> Phrased like that, or something like it, they can imagine its use in
> their practice, and why it's important.

Yes!  I could not agree more, except for one point.  The reason this 
debate arose was because a W3C technical specification -- the JSON-LD 
spec -- was proposing to include a *definition* of Linked Data.  And 
that is very different than trying to convey a rough idea of Linked Data 
to a non-technical audience.

To my mind, if Linked Data is defined in a W3C technical specification 
-- *especially* if that spec is coming from the RDF working group -- 
then the definition needs to be complete and correct -- not merely 
suggestive.  We can of course debate the details of what that definition 
should be, but that's a different matter.

David

Received on Tuesday, 18 June 2013 13:33:22 UTC