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RE: RDF, the "semantic web", and the nadir of AI (was RE: Realist ic pro

• From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@e...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 03:40:38 -0400

> I don't know whether or not the semantic web will 
> succeed, but the idea does make some sense. 

Please explain it to us all... I've never really grokked it,
and I used to work in AI...

> The problem was that it was not in anybody's interest 
> to type in all the assertions you would like to be able 
> to base your reasoning on. 

The more important, larger problem is that even *if* you have all
the assertions, they are

  a) never complete
  b) never correct (especially in the face of change)

> If that all happened, we would have three small, 
> creative camps working together, and it just might achieve 
> critical mass.

RDF, Topic Maps and XLink have pretty different use-cases.
Bringing them together doesn't really solve the problems
they're trying to solve individually.

> <Quote src="http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=527"> 
>   the crucial thing is to recognize that the namespace 
>   identifier identifies the language of the message and 
>   so indirectly its meaning. 
> </Quote> 

This is *precisely* where namespaces fail: the semantics of
the identifiers *will* change over time (unless one uses
UUID's that are devoid of meaning), and hence will alter the
semantics. In other words, the *language* they identify
will change.

For example, if I use 

  <foo xmlns:j="http://www.ebt.com/jersey"/>

what does jersey tell me about the meaning? Is it the
cow, the island, or the sweater? 

Even if you have a notion that I'm talking about cows, how
does that affect *your* processor? Some binding step is
missing here... a name is just a name. That's very different
from semantics.

The fact is that whatever *consumes* the data get's to interpret
it and turn it into information. How it does that defines the
semantics of the data. Namespaces, by *convention* may help
to standardize the interpretation, but the link is fragile
at best. At the end of the day, it will be *social* or
*legal* conventions that drive true interoperability, and
true common interpretation.

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: Robin Berjon <robin@k...>

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  • RE: RDF, the "semantic web", and the nadir of AI (was RE: Realist ic proposals to the W3C?)
    • From: Jonathan.Robie@S...

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