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Re: RDF, the "semantic web", and the nadir of AI

• From: Bob La Quey <robertl1@h...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 12:11:05 -0700

At 09:50 PM 10/18/00 +0800, you wrote:
>Robin Berjon wrote:
>> I'm not sure it *has* to be looked at from an AI perspective.  
>
>Rick JELLIFFE replied:
>If we can give TBL the benefit of the doubt, I think it is possible that
>the "semantic web" means--at least--something.  At a minimum, surely it
>is a web of atoms of information each component of which can be
>universally addressed, and where the arcs between each node (or the node
>itself) has some label, and that if one can trace back along these arcs
>(including schemas to bring the labels into the web too) to well-known
>datums (IYKWIM) then one can do more or less useful things with that
>web. 
>
>This is not AI, this is just a big fat database. Is dog has a collar; a
>dog is an animal; an animal can have a name; a dog can have a collar, a
>collar can have a name tag; a nametag can have a name: start from the
>dog and do a search of everything connected to it to try to find the
>name.  AI comes into the heuristics in navigating around a database of
>information.
>
>The question is how much the technology we are building actually
>promotes that: an XML Schema is not "semantic" in the kind of sense
>above--it gives information for types not meanings or properties. This
>is one objection to identifying namespaces and schemas too much: it
>actively prevents a semantic web (in that sense.)
>
>Cheers
>Rick
>

Hi Rick,

I really think you nailed it. All RDF is is a way to annotate
the existing (and future) web with a navigational network. 

That is why I like Simon Melnik's proposal for a simplified 
RDF syntax so much. Simon's work makes this completely 
obvious. Just use his suggested attributes to decorate 
existing ML. 

See: 

1) Simplified Syntax for RDF
   http://www-db.stanford.edu/~melnik/rdf/syntax.html

2) Bridging the Gap between RDF and XML
   http://www-db.stanford.edu/~melnik/rdf/fusion.html

"It is a goal to facilitate the use of RDF mechanisms to access 
 the information contained in a broad range of  XML documents, 
 including those that were not initially structured according 
 to the RDF 1.0 layering." 

--- The Cambridge Communiqué [CC99]

Onward,


Bob La Quey

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