Re: The need for RDF in Linked Data

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:32:55 +0200, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:

> 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.

Well, if we are going to put a definition, we need to debate the details.

IMHO, that's not a very productive activity. The term is deliberately  
"sorta kinda". Trying to change that seems like a bad idea, and getting a  
definition out of something like that is a more or less fruitless quest.

cheers

Chaals


-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Tuesday, 18 June 2013 16:22:52 UTC