- From: Charlie Abela <abcharl@keyworld.net>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 07:26:17 +0200
- To: <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>, <www-rdf-logic@w3.org>
Hi all, I was recently involved in a discussion about the semantic web with a friend of mine who is rather sceptic about some ideas that are being presented on the topic. Some of his arguments were quite convincing. Below I am adapting part of his reply to one of my mailsBasically he is concerned about the way that the Semantic Web regards 'context'. His interests are mainly those of ensuring, from a user's perspective, that 'information' is consistent with the way the user wants to use it, which is only (potentially) remotely connected with the way the author intends it to be used. His view of the Semantic Web (of which Web Services is a specific sub-part) is that it is primarily (if not practically exclusively) focused on expressing the meaning of information as the author intended. Except that he believes that it is extremely limiting. He argues that discoveries are made by taking data and interpreting it in an unexpected 'context' (whatever context means) and that the approach that is being considered by the Semantic Web community to information representation and reasoning may prevent information discovery. Reasoning in the Semantic Web is monotonic and makes an open world assumption, rather than nonmonotonic and making a closed world assumption. He is reluctant to believe that taking an open world, monotonic approach to reasoning will necessarily ensure that the information transmitter/receiver will actually be able to work out that they are "talking" about the same thing without first decontextualising the data being reasoned with/about, which he argues that in itself this is intractable. He is also concerned about the approach taken by the Semantic Web that assumes that information (data in context) is consistent, because i) this is only possible with undisputed/indisputable facts (which are only a proportion of the 'information' humans use to reason with/about), and ii) will it necessitate a Microsoft-like company to make available (for a fee, of course!) consistent information for open world, monotonic reasoners to use? Can someone give me some comments on the above? Regards, Charlie
Received on Friday, 18 July 2003 01:22:11 UTC