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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'
by 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 agoFirst, 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 agoReification 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.