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

• From: Bill dehOra <wdehora@c...>
• To: "'Bullard, Claude L (Len)'" <clbullar@i...>, xml-dev@l...
• Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 14:36:48 +0100

>Umm... like Xlinks?   Like search engine data?  Like thesauri?

Xlinks and Thesauri, sure. Ron Daniel has mapped Xlinks onto RDF. But maybe
not search engine data (indices of annotations would count). RDF and RDF
languages are good because that gives the programs that want to dig out
implicit annotations (ai/kr automagicking) decent data structures to process
over. 

>So not a semantic web but a smart librarian?

Well my intent generally is to remove the word 'semantic' since it's
confusing and difficult for a group of people to get a common purchase on.
It took me the longest time to figure out what people were on about, the
figuring out of which became easier when I replaced the word semantic with
notated. 


>It's a services-web and the librarian is a service.

Yep. It's a web that a: has requisite platforms that you can begin to think
about registering and running distributed services on, b: decent data
structures to describe and notate those services and platforms c: decent
programs to manipulate those services and join them together 

And as a bonus, d: minimisation of the operational difference between
services, service description and programs that use them; so you can
annotate anything with anything (another good reason to use rdf). But this
last is really just a rip of the code is data  paradigm, which is Lisp
hacking in practical terms.  

So we don't worry too much if the librarian is an active thing (something
that looks at something) or a passive thing (something that is looked at by
something). It just needs to be able to be annotated (looked at) and
possibly make annotations (looking at) which can be processed over. 

I don't think there is anything really new here except the scale of the
semantic web vision, which is on the big side even as visions go. As far as
I can tell there isn't a better or bigger vision going around at the moment.

-Bill de hÓra

>Len 
>http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
>
>Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
>Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Bill dehOra [mailto:wdehora@c...]
>
>The big idea behind the semantic web is that we can do more significant
>stuff than turn some words blue and draw lines underneath them. But the
>significance is in the eye of the beholder. Qualia nuts 
>notwithstanding, the
>semantic stuff is not different from the data stuff or the 
>metadata stuff.
>Significance makes the difference.
>
>Most of the tools exist already to cobble this together. What 
>is needed are
>some good data structures to create the rich links/notes 
>between bits of
>markup.
>

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