7 ms·

The Semantic Web is incompatible with the commercial incentives of most technology companies. For instance, it would currently be irrational for Facebook to vol

by smadge 9y ago

The Semantic Web is incompatible with the commercial incentives of most technology companies. For instance, it would currently be irrational for Facebook to voluntarily publish their social network using the friend of a friend schema. Their profit is derived from their centralized, private ownership of this data. Hopefully we can move towards a decentralized or federate, public web.

rspeer 9y ago
The Semantic Web as originally imagined is also incompatible with privacy, and with malicious fake data. So is the decentralized Web you imagine, I think. Let's keep using FOAF as an example. The facts about who knows who in FOAF are just bare RDF triples. There's nothing about who's allowed to know who knows who. There isn't even room to specify who's allowed to know who knows who. If any significant number of people had described their friends and relationships with FOAF, all of it would quickly have been slurped into a marketing database. There's also no room in traditional Semantic Web ontologies to keep track of the provenance of why you believe something, and to disbelieve something that comes from an unreliable source. Every triple is supposed to be a statement of fact that you can derive things from as if it is 100% true. You could use FOAF to say you're married to Tim Berners-Lee, and not even Sir Tim would have a way to say "no you're not".
- smadge 9y ago
  First, Does it matter much if agents spread misinformation in an unstructured versus structured format? I can already assert that I am married to Tim Berners-Lee. I will do so right now: I am married to Tim Berners-Lee. I will do so again: <http://example.com/smadge> <http://schema.org/name> "smadge" . <http://example.com/smadge> <http://schema.org/spouse> "http://example.com/timbl" . <http://example.com/smadge> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> <http://schema.org/Person> . I think the maxim "not everything on the internet is true" applies to linked data just as much as unstructured data. Second, although again I am out of my area of expertise, I think you can make provenance statements about statements using reification in Semantic Web technologies. I don't know if this is a good source but it seems to suggest it's possible [1]. [1] https://wiki.blazegraph.com/wiki/index.php/Reification_Done_Right https://wiki.blazegraph.com/wiki/index.php/Reification_Done_...
  - rspeer 9y ago
    Reification is at least part of the solution to provenance, but none of the Semantic Web ontologies you've ever heard of use reification, and there is no upgrade path to make an ontology based on plain un-reified triples use reification. To continue this example: you asserted, in English, "I am married to Tim Berners-Lee". In English, anyone can respond "No you're not". Then you said it again in RDF, in a way that hypothetically a computer system would use to draw conclusions. And there is no way to say "no you're not" in RDF.
acutesoftware 9y ago
Yes, once everyone thinks that 'Data is the new oil', things like public shared standards fly out the window. There are many open upper level ontologies available (I counted 16 when I did a review a few years ago - http://www.acutesoftware.com.au/aikif/ontology.html http://www.acutesoftware.com.au/aikif/ontology.html), but the really complete ones are not publically available (Cyc full version, Googles internal ontology and the countless others held in corporate servers).
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Where is Googles internal ontology used exactly?
  - acutesoftware 9y ago
    I don't know, but I just assumed they use it everywhere. They have a very good mapping of related terms and a fairly consistent mapping. A visible example is when you look for organisations and they have a classification against it. e.g. Google IBM and they call it "Computer manufacturing company" - these classifications are different to many of the standards for specific sets of data
    - executesorder66 9y ago
      Where do you see google calling IBM a "Computer manufacturing company" if you search for IBM? I'm not saying they don't. I just want to see examples of what you are talking about. I googled IBM, and did not see it classified as such.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        It does for me. But this actually highlights one of the problems with classifications like this. Is IBM really primarily a computer manufacturing company today? Their systems business is only about 15% of revenue.
      - acutesoftware 9y ago
icebraining 9y ago
Well, some tech companies. StackOverflow, for example, now annotates their questions and answers with http://schema.org/Answer http://schema.org/Answer. But then again, they've always been good citizens in that regard: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

by smadge 9y ago

rspeer 9y ago

The Semantic Web as originally imagined is also incompatible with privacy, and with malicious fake data. So is the decentralized Web you imagine, I think. Let's keep using FOAF as an example. The facts about who knows who in FOAF are just bare RDF triples. There's nothing about who's allowed to know who knows who. There isn't even room to specify who's allowed to know who knows who. If any significant number of people had described their friends and relationships with FOAF, all of it would quickly have been slurped into a marketing database. There's also no room in traditional Semantic Web ontologies to keep track of the provenance of why you believe something, and to disbelieve something that comes from an unreliable source. Every triple is supposed to be a statement of fact that you can derive things from as if it is 100% true. You could use FOAF to say you're married to Tim Berners-Lee, and not even Sir Tim would have a way to say "no you're not".

smadge 9y ago
First, Does it matter much if agents spread misinformation in an unstructured versus structured format? I can already assert that I am married to Tim Berners-Lee. I will do so right now: I am married to Tim Berners-Lee. I will do so again: <http://example.com/smadge> <http://schema.org/name> "smadge" . <http://example.com/smadge> <http://schema.org/spouse> "http://example.com/timbl" . <http://example.com/smadge> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> <http://schema.org/Person> . I think the maxim "not everything on the internet is true" applies to linked data just as much as unstructured data. Second, although again I am out of my area of expertise, I think you can make provenance statements about statements using reification in Semantic Web technologies. I don't know if this is a good source but it seems to suggest it's possible [1]. [1] https://wiki.blazegraph.com/wiki/index.php/Reification_Done_Right https://wiki.blazegraph.com/wiki/index.php/Reification_Done_...
- rspeer 9y ago
  Reification is at least part of the solution to provenance, but none of the Semantic Web ontologies you've ever heard of use reification, and there is no upgrade path to make an ontology based on plain un-reified triples use reification. To continue this example: you asserted, in English, "I am married to Tim Berners-Lee". In English, anyone can respond "No you're not". Then you said it again in RDF, in a way that hypothetically a computer system would use to draw conclusions. And there is no way to say "no you're not" in RDF.

acutesoftware 9y ago

Yes, once everyone thinks that 'Data is the new oil', things like public shared standards fly out the window. There are many open upper level ontologies available (I counted 16 when I did a review a few years ago - http://www.acutesoftware.com.au/aikif/ontology.html http://www.acutesoftware.com.au/aikif/ontology.html), but the really complete ones are not publically available (Cyc full version, Googles internal ontology and the countless others held in corporate servers).

bogomipz 9y ago
Where is Googles internal ontology used exactly?
- acutesoftware 9y ago
  I don't know, but I just assumed they use it everywhere. They have a very good mapping of related terms and a fairly consistent mapping. A visible example is when you look for organisations and they have a classification against it. e.g. Google IBM and they call it "Computer manufacturing company" - these classifications are different to many of the standards for specific sets of data
  - executesorder66 9y ago
    Where do you see google calling IBM a "Computer manufacturing company" if you search for IBM? I'm not saying they don't. I just want to see examples of what you are talking about. I googled IBM, and did not see it classified as such.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      It does for me. But this actually highlights one of the problems with classifications like this. Is IBM really primarily a computer manufacturing company today? Their systems business is only about 15% of revenue.
    - acutesoftware 9y ago

icebraining 9y ago

Well, some tech companies. StackOverflow, for example, now annotates their questions and answers with http://schema.org/Answer http://schema.org/Answer. But then again, they've always been good citizens in that regard: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange https://archive.org/details/stackexchange