Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Do you really expect the Semantic Web to educate fools?
Somehow these "fools" always turn out to be our brothers and sisters,
mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and family - even me.
Automobile manufacturers were finally required to provide seatbelts
and airbags to protect the "fools" that drive recklessly and to
protect us from them. I suspect they objected at first, saying things
like "Its not cars that cause accidents, its the fools who drive them
carelessly that kill people. You'll cripple transportation if you ask
us to get involved in these problems."
There's another argument made that considerations of such
problems and any solutions to them don't belong in the architecture.
In the past, buildings were designed without regard for earthquakes.
Over the years, thousands of people died. Now building architects
build defenses against earthquakes into the architecture from the
start.
Its also suggested that we don't know enough about what the Semantic
Web will become to act now. I thought of this argument this morning
as I was driving to work in an intense fog that comes over Northern
Virginia sometimes. When my visibility is reduced, and I can't see
what dangers lie ahead, I tend to become more cautious and alert,
rather than less. So why does the uncertainty of direction of the
Semantic Web argue for doing nothing? Are we hoping that if we
just keep quiet and leave it up to government and lawyers, maybe
they won't come back and ask us, "Hey. Can't you do something
technological about this? something like quake-proof buildings
or automobiles with airbags?"
There seems to be a sense in society that the makers of products
should think about these things. Is the Semantic Web different? Are
sw-agents products? If not, what are they? Are they beings, endowed
by their creators with inalienable rights? Do they have first amendment
rights? Someone's going to think and act on these questions. Why not
us, here, now?
mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and family - even me.
Automobile manufacturers were finally required to provide seatbelts
and airbags to protect the "fools" that drive recklessly and to
protect us from them. I suspect they objected at first, saying things
like "Its not cars that cause accidents, its the fools who drive them
carelessly that kill people. You'll cripple transportation if you ask
us to get involved in these problems."
There's another argument made that considerations of such
problems and any solutions to them don't belong in the architecture.
In the past, buildings were designed without regard for earthquakes.
Over the years, thousands of people died. Now building architects
build defenses against earthquakes into the architecture from the
start.
Its also suggested that we don't know enough about what the Semantic
Web will become to act now. I thought of this argument this morning
as I was driving to work in an intense fog that comes over Northern
Virginia sometimes. When my visibility is reduced, and I can't see
what dangers lie ahead, I tend to become more cautious and alert,
rather than less. So why does the uncertainty of direction of the
Semantic Web argue for doing nothing? Are we hoping that if we
just keep quiet and leave it up to government and lawyers, maybe
they won't come back and ask us, "Hey. Can't you do something
technological about this? something like quake-proof buildings
or automobiles with airbags?"
There seems to be a sense in society that the makers of products
should think about these things. Is the Semantic Web different? Are
sw-agents products? If not, what are they? Are they beings, endowed
by their creators with inalienable rights? Do they have first amendment
rights? Someone's going to think and act on these questions. Why not
us, here, now?
Monday, October 06, 2003
The Webmaster and the Logician
To a Logician, the URIs used as logical constants to denote entities are deliberately minimal symbols. So are the entities they refer to. One might compare the entities they refer to to points in a volume of space in that each has position but takes up no space. You can label this position, to give you a logical constant to refer to it in statements, but this label could be from any number of systems of names, in any language, including a URI. These labels name the points referred to in an interpretation of the model. They make up the universe of discourse. Like patterns formed of pinpricks of starlight, what really matters are the constellations formed in these spaces by statements in the language. These are investigated by swapping in different sets of points to find out if the constellations shape holds with all possible sets of points. It is good and proper for a Logician to use URIs to do this.
To a Webmaster, URIs are weighty things. Some URIs have great economic value. Domain names are bought and sold, sometimes for millions of dollars. URIs are torn down and built up character by character with great care by armies of programmers. Some are old, nearing a decade in age, still referring to basically the same site. Individuals and organizations form deep attachments to URIs. Firewalls are built and lawsuits are filed to protect their use. These URIs refer to entities like planets teeming with all forms of life. The URIs themselves feel more like flags or coats of arms denoting the riches of kingdoms than mere labels. It is good and proper for the Webmaster to use URIs like this.
So the Webmaster and the Logician have different feelings when working with RDF. The Webmaster, though eager to acquire the tools that the Logician promises to build, sometimes gets a little nervous about the fast and loose treatment of URIs he sees. Often he can't help but feel a bit insulted by the lack of respect shown URIs. The Logician, for his part, gets annoyed at the sentimentality he perceives in the Webmaster, and chides him for standing in the way of progress. As the work of the Logician progresses towards completion, the Webmaster may start feeling a little panicky.
The Webmaster may say, "Enough with the swapping in and out interpretations. You've done your investigations, you have forms that are true and valid in all possible interpretations, but don't forget why we commissioned you in the first place. It's time to apply this machinery to the Web of existing URIs. Its time to build an application of RDF by investigating what happens if we all agree on this single interpretation where each URI in RDF denotes a real URI from this existing universe of URIs. You agreed this could be done during the Joust in July. So its time to get your head out of the stars and remember we're engineers building a real world application."
The Logician might then pull back indignantly, "No. I can't let my work be constrained like that. You'll remove it's generality, it's power. Don't get timid and plebian now. You've done a great thing to have us build our edifice, and it can be used in your world. But it can do so much more if you just don't cripple it by constraining it to a single interpretation.
To a Webmaster, URIs are weighty things. Some URIs have great economic value. Domain names are bought and sold, sometimes for millions of dollars. URIs are torn down and built up character by character with great care by armies of programmers. Some are old, nearing a decade in age, still referring to basically the same site. Individuals and organizations form deep attachments to URIs. Firewalls are built and lawsuits are filed to protect their use. These URIs refer to entities like planets teeming with all forms of life. The URIs themselves feel more like flags or coats of arms denoting the riches of kingdoms than mere labels. It is good and proper for the Webmaster to use URIs like this.
So the Webmaster and the Logician have different feelings when working with RDF. The Webmaster, though eager to acquire the tools that the Logician promises to build, sometimes gets a little nervous about the fast and loose treatment of URIs he sees. Often he can't help but feel a bit insulted by the lack of respect shown URIs. The Logician, for his part, gets annoyed at the sentimentality he perceives in the Webmaster, and chides him for standing in the way of progress. As the work of the Logician progresses towards completion, the Webmaster may start feeling a little panicky.
The Webmaster may say, "Enough with the swapping in and out interpretations. You've done your investigations, you have forms that are true and valid in all possible interpretations, but don't forget why we commissioned you in the first place. It's time to apply this machinery to the Web of existing URIs. Its time to build an application of RDF by investigating what happens if we all agree on this single interpretation where each URI in RDF denotes a real URI from this existing universe of URIs. You agreed this could be done during the Joust in July. So its time to get your head out of the stars and remember we're engineers building a real world application."
The Logician might then pull back indignantly, "No. I can't let my work be constrained like that. You'll remove it's generality, it's power. Don't get timid and plebian now. You've done a great thing to have us build our edifice, and it can be used in your world. But it can do so much more if you just don't cripple it by constraining it to a single interpretation.
