RE: peer-to-peer was Re: Distributed querying on the semantic web

James Lynn:
> Jeremy Question/Suggestion at end -
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org
> > [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Jeremy Carroll
> > Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 3:00 PM
> > To: Jonathan Chetwynd
> > Cc: Phil Dawes; www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> > Subject: Re: peer-to-peer was Re: Distributed querying on the semantic
> > web
> >
> >
> >
> > Thus we can identify three levels of centralization in a semantic
> > architecture:
> >
> > 1: fully centralized
> >    terms and their meaning are defined by a single world wide
> > authority.
> > See many standard internet vocabularies for doing X or Y
> >
> > 2: terms decentralized, meanings per term centralized
> >    anyone can make up a term, but for each term there is a
> > (potentially
> > different) central authority that defines its meanings
> >
> > 3: fully decentralized
> >    anyone can make up a term, anyone can make up a meaning
> >
> > We know that (1) can work for some applications.
> > We know that (3) works (our life as a society, both natural
> > language and
> > other modalities of meaning use this method)
> >
> > There are many who argue that (2) is the right way for the SemWeb.
> > [Maybe I am going to argue myself into (2), I prefer the
> > beauty of (3),
> > but the engineer in me sees the attraction of (2)]
> >
> > Note that the choice of semantic architecture is orthogonal to the
> > choice of distributed system architecture - it is possible to
> > implement
> > SemArch (3) on a mainframe serving the planet; it is possible to
> > implement SemArch (1) on thousands or millions of peers
> > circling the globe.
>
> How about a hybrid of (2) and (3). One would have the option of
> availing themselves of "the beauty of (3)" while referring to
> centralized definitions as appropriate or convenient. Isn't this
> what we do in technical writing? We make up our own definitions
> when truly neccesary but find it convenient and efficient to make
> use of definitions from previously published papers.
>
>

That's nice. It seems, to me at least, to chime with Peter's view that
authority and definition comes about in a social process. In general, such a
social process *does* indeed create some places that are more authoritative
than others, but is always at least a little anarchic.

Jeremy

Received on Friday, 23 April 2004 11:23:30 UTC