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RE: Semantic Web

• To: 'John Cowan' <jcowan@r...>
• Subject: RE: Semantic Web
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 15:17:38 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

So the PF article only applies to those who open 
up to Googling.  The incentive to do so is that 
some very large majority of people use Google as 
their portal to the web; so, the game then becomes 
to get people from Google to Reuters whereupon 
they are instructed that for them to use Reuters 
fully, they pay to play.  Ok.  Discovery and 
service offers.  Basic web service.

But anyone who depends on Google to get them 
the "best information" for free is fooling 
themselves. They will learn.

The troublesome bits are when services need 
information but are unwilling or unable to 
pay for them, and in fact, may be trying to 
get to data that would otherwise be public 
record.  This is like the case several years 
ago when a non-web service controlled practically 
all access to government records and made 
people pay for access although the information 
itself was free.

It's easy to see where this will become bitter. 
One wonders if it will evolve as the original 
electrical utilities did; originally, they were 
private companies, but with the advent of the 
TVA, had to face competition from the government 
and the subsequent rise of public utilities.

I wonder what kind of taxes people become 
willing to endure to ensure that they don't 
have to pay for access to their own medical 
records?  Before anyone gets inflamed, many 
public records require fees to see.  That 
is one task of Dissemination Mgt modules 
among others.

Then the next awful thing as we have discussed 
before is "googling for government" in which 
one has to trust that what others say about them 
is accurate because decisions with regards to 
ones eligibility for say, health care, become 
mediated by those opinions.   The health care 
provider quits asking on the form "Do You Smoke?" 
and instead, asks your acquaintences profiles 
about you, checks past photographs, etc.

<LetsGetExtreme>
Information scavenging:  one can envision a 
day in which there is a profit made for every 
fact asserted (say a penny for your thoughts), 
and devices sold cheaply for collecting them. 
One day one finds oneself making sure that 
every hair lost is collected and disposed of 
to prevent rogue DNA testers from getting 
samples.  Some shave themselves completely. 
Schools teach people to be very quiet and 
use only approved neutral language to keep 
the language testers from getting samples.

It becomes quite medieval; when princes had 
servants to collect nail clippings so the 
local witches couldn't get them.
</LetsGetExtreme>

len


From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@r...]



"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" scripsit:

> And the "self-generated" "extremely detailed and comprehensive" 
> data is not available to Google?

No.  There are no links to it, and even if there were, it requires
password access, which Google does not have.

> Interesting.  So, one might generate a lot of RDF to classify 
> a resource such that a representation can be chosen, but then 
> make that RDF resource itself, a pay to play option.  Thus, 
> the Semantic Web becomes the upgrade option for a service. 

The idea is that:

	1) Basic Reuters Health news is available for free on our site,
	but if you want it on your site, you must pay.

	2) Professional RHI news is available at our site or your site,
	but you must pay in either case.

	3) Either kind of news is available with subject-matter
	classification in RDF format if you want to do your own
	classification of it, but then you must pay extra (partly to us,
	partly to the people we license our classifications from).

> That might make the web profitable where content has some 
> perceived value, and it might get a lot of people to start 
> generating more RDF.  It will also stratify the web.

Indeed.

> Noting the USENET example that Joshua posted:  global 
> ontologies work.  But shoult the global ontologies themselves 
> be free resources even if once applied to a given resource, 
> the resources generated by using them might not be.

The top level should certainly be free.  The fine-grained 100,000-plus
terms we use, probably not: someone had to work very hard to create and
maintain those.

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