3 ms·

The opening paragraph is structurally identical to "buy our nuclear power plant, it'll generate a billion terawatts, oh and it also comes with this bike shed".

by xamuel 12y ago

The opening paragraph is structurally identical to "buy our nuclear power plant, it'll generate a billion terawatts, oh and it also comes with this bike shed". Prolog (the submission says) handles the gruesome problem of dealing with RDF, oh and it also generates HTML pages and JSON! That pattern's a red flag whenever I see it. Like an ostensible proof of P!=NP that begins with a 30 page history written for laymen. Who is that paragraph aimed at? Is there really a sizeable population casually using RDF and Prolog but losing sleep over HTML and JSON?

brudgers 12y ago
There are a lot of non-developer types who need to deal with metadata and for whom the mechanics of websites are irrelevant, e.g. scientific researchers or art historians or statisticians. Librarians invented metadata not computer scientists.
- orbifold 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure philosophers invented metadata, even though they did not give it that name. The question how to distinguish between the properties an object has and what properties we attach to it, is sort of central in epistemology. Higher category theorists sometimes distinguish between stuff, structure and property http://nlab.mathforge.org/nlab/show/stuff,+structure,+property http://nlab.mathforge.org/nlab/show/stuff,+structure,+proper..., which makes the definition of forgetful functors more precise. Conversly attaching structure or properties are (not nescessarily unique) adjoint functors to those forgetful ones. In mathematics this comes up for example if you consider the category of abelian groups from which there is both a forgetful functor to the category of groups and to the category of sets, but the general idea should be applicable to metadata attached to text aswell.
  - kendallgclark 12y ago
    Aristotelian distinction between essential and accidental properties is probably what yr thinking about here, but that's not really the same distinction as the one between data and metadata.
p4bl0 12y ago
> a population casually using RDF and Prolog but losing sleep over HTML and JSON? Have you met academics? Just kidding ;), but by exaggerating, not by lying. (Also I know for a fact that you have met academics). Of course any compsci academic can pick-up HTML and JSON in half an hour of time, but it's not mad to imagine that some of them never were interested in actual web technologies (working on RDF can be done from a purely theoretical point of view) and seeing this sentences on HTML and JSON may be a useful information to them, just as mentioning a practical use-case at the end of a paper's abstract can be.

by xamuel 12y ago

brudgers 12y ago

There are a lot of non-developer types who need to deal with metadata and for whom the mechanics of websites are irrelevant, e.g. scientific researchers or art historians or statisticians. Librarians invented metadata not computer scientists.

orbifold 12y ago
I'm pretty sure philosophers invented metadata, even though they did not give it that name. The question how to distinguish between the properties an object has and what properties we attach to it, is sort of central in epistemology. Higher category theorists sometimes distinguish between stuff, structure and property http://nlab.mathforge.org/nlab/show/stuff,+structure,+property http://nlab.mathforge.org/nlab/show/stuff,+structure,+proper..., which makes the definition of forgetful functors more precise. Conversly attaching structure or properties are (not nescessarily unique) adjoint functors to those forgetful ones. In mathematics this comes up for example if you consider the category of abelian groups from which there is both a forgetful functor to the category of groups and to the category of sets, but the general idea should be applicable to metadata attached to text aswell.
- kendallgclark 12y ago
  Aristotelian distinction between essential and accidental properties is probably what yr thinking about here, but that's not really the same distinction as the one between data and metadata.

p4bl0 12y ago

> a population casually using RDF and Prolog but losing sleep over HTML and JSON? Have you met academics? Just kidding ;), but by exaggerating, not by lying. (Also I know for a fact that you have met academics). Of course any compsci academic can pick-up HTML and JSON in half an hour of time, but it's not mad to imagine that some of them never were interested in actual web technologies (working on RDF can be done from a purely theoretical point of view) and seeing this sentences on HTML and JSON may be a useful information to them, just as mentioning a practical use-case at the end of a paper's abstract can be.