Re: What Happened to the Semantic Web?

​Hi Krzysztof,​

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 12:12 AM, Krzysztof Janowicz <janowicz@ucsb.edu>
wrote:

> I find it difficult to see why centralization will not be the end game for
> the SW as it has been for so many other aspects of computing (search,
> email, social networking, even simple things like text chat).
>
> I am not sure what you mean.

​I can give an example.  ​While FOSS exists for setting up your own email
server very few people today do this.  What is true at the individual level
is increasingly becoming true at the community/organization level as well.
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) moved the email facility for all its
students&staff over to Gmail a few years ago.  Similar examples can be
given for most other common Web-based tasks (code is shared on Github,
personal (mini|micro)blogs are maintained at Twitter, etc.)
​


> Most of the knowledge graphs out there today, however, are one way streets
> in which the public contributes, updates, and cleans the data but does not
> get free and open access to that very data.

​If data becomes an asset companies will not be eager to give everyone free
read access to it.  There is also some fairness to this, provided the
company has invested in collecting/cleaning/disseminating the data.  I see
a parallel with Cyc which may be one of the highest quality KBs in
existence but which has always had a restrictive read policy (through
expensive licensing).​

While reading SW data will become a problem as soon as that data becomes
valuable, it is also difficult to *write* to the SW today.  As the sheer
number of readable endpoints is very low (sparqles.ai.wu.ac.at monitors 150
of them right now, and shows that growth over time is only linear) it is
difficult to express your personal opinion ("Everyone can say anything
about anything​", as Ruben mentioned).  With so few readable endpoints out
there each endpoint will have to aggregate opinions of many people into one
data collection.  If you have an alternative opinion about something that
does not fit into an existing endpoint's aggregate your opinion will simply
not be found.  This negatively impacts the democratic potential of the SW
IMO.

>
> The WWW shows that the 'soft benefits' of privacy, democratic potential,
> and data ownership are not enough to make distributed solutions succeed.
>
> IMHO, the WWW shows the exact opposite. I also do not see these three as
> 'soft benefits'.

​I intended 'soft benefits' to denote those aspects of computing that apply
to the broader social and societal context within which technology
operates.  There may be more standard terminology to express this (fuzzy)
distinction.

'Soft' should in no sense be taken to imply 'less important' or anything
like that!
​
---
Best,
Wouter.

Email: me@wouterbeek.com
WWW: wouterbeek.com
Tel: +31647674624