Clay Shirky: it turns out that people can share data without having to share a worldview, so we got the meta-data without needing the ontology
Two parts brilliance, one part strawman. Pity, actually, as I am sympathetic with the point that Clay is trying to make.
Someone should frame this statement
There is a list of technologies that are actually political philosophy masquerading as code, a list that includes Xanadu, Freenet, and now the Semantic Web.
Some of his arguments are strawman arguments but not enough of them are that it takes away from the fundamental insightfulness of the piece.
I agree with you Sam. I thought it was very interesting reading, and carefully thought out, with some good arguments. However, the article starts with: what is the Semantic web. Well, it's this stuff, syllogistic logic and ontologies, neither of which fits the real world. But then, the article ends with, well, whatever it is, its coming, but it won't be using a global ontology. A conclusion that isn't supported by his argument about syllogistic logic failing because the web doesn't break cleanly into assertions.
(BTW, I didn't think anyone was pushing for an upfront global ontology -- just that we all use the same model so when we find data that could work together, it does so without any other intervention.)
Interesing reading, though.
I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but he doesn't seem to understand syllogisms. He says:
- US citizens are people
- The First Amendment covers the rights of US citizens
- Nike is protected by the First AmendmentYou could conclude from this that Nike is a person, and of course you would be right.
But you wouldn't. You'd be very wrong. In a symbolic manner this is:
US Citizen => Person
US Citizen => Covered by First Amendment
Nike => Covered by First Amendment
Where '=>' means implies. To make his conclusion he would have to reverse the second statement. I think that you'd have to say something like 'The First Amendment only covers the rights of US citizens'
His Vampire example contains a similar error.
At the very least this hows that these things are easy to get wrong, backing up Cory Doctrow's argument. I'm sure I've probably made some mistake in this post as well.
"Much of the proposed value of the Semantic Web is coming, but it is not coming because of the Semantic Web. The amount of meta-data we generate is increasing dramatically, and it is being exposed for consumption by machines as well as, or instead of, people. But it is being designed a bit at a time, out of self-interest and without regard for global ontology."
This is probably the most egregious of all the statements he makes.
The Semantic Web absolutely allows development "a bit at a time, out of self-interest and without regard for global ontology" but it also allows cosensus building, altruistism and creating global ontologies.
To quote TBL: "Its the integration, stupid!"
fyi, some comments from Dan Brickley on Shirky's opus:
Sorry Sam, there's little brilliance or insight here, in the same way there was little brilliance or insight in Joel Spolsky's analysis of exceptions. I much preferred the turtles all the way down angle - now there's insight. And he might want to revise the piece - there are bugs in his syllogisms.
In any case many of the people working on and speccing the semweb do understand the limitations. They include people that discovered fundamental limitations with symoblic AI, going back to the late 70s; notably Pat Hayes and Drew McDermott. Google for "yale shooting match", "abductive inference", "frame problem". And if you're wondering they're still bothering, the answer is much the same reason programmers bother after they discover Turing completeness.
And this:
[[[
the Semantic Web imagines that completeness and correctness of data exposed on the web are the cardinal virtues, and that any amount of implementation complexity is acceptable in pursuit of those virtues.
]]]
is bunk imho. Never mind AI reborn, does he not have any idea how quickly "business logic" spreads through systems, strangles and kills them - that job one of a modern software engagement is keeping the codebase clean so the conditional logic doesn't get out of control? As for AI reborn, do read: http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/~sst/is/WebOntologyLanguage/hayes.htm.
Dave: fixed - thanks!
P.S. Xian: I welcome and acknowledge public bug reports.
Xian, my statement stands alone, and is still valid, even informative (but not normative), even after Sam made the fix. When the Semantic Web gets built, and if it considers me a trusted source, it will now have a rule for its knowledge base, and should Sam or someone else add an "e" to Clay's last name, no knowledge will be lost! It's so powerful, that even if one were to spell his last name as "Shierky" or "eShirkeeyee" the Semantic Web would be route around the spelling error.
Now, a robot might wonder why you didn't send your complaint via email. In fact, you don't have to be a robot to wonder.
Have a great day.
I agree with Mr. Obasanjo and, by serendipity, ran across a bookmark to "The Well-Formed Web" piece. I would go a little further, and suggest that plenty of people who are "pissing on" SemWeb have, in fact, developed alternatives.
Now me?? I haven't developed squat, so would be among those throwing tomatoes from the peanuts gallery. I have, OTOH, a long-ingrained, and very deep, skepticism and suspicion of both snake-oil salesmen and pseudo-Shamans.. both variations of the same personality being in abundance on the Net. Because people can be near-100% right on-target one time, and pert-near the opposite the next.
For example, until last night I consistently read the first post in this thread as "Somebody should RE-frame this statement"! Nonetheless, I will do so by saying that there is also code masquerading as politics, and code and Religion masquerading as each other, and (obviously?) code and power are also inextricably linked in this web, likewise.
I dislike singling out any individual like The Philosopher Xian, but I could have dissected his comment (http://66.70.191.189/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=2016) word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence the way Dave Winer did above. (And glad to see Xian has some sense of humor about it all.)
Similarly, I've seen many, Many, Many comments along the lines of these by Mr. Ayers and Mr. Steer:
http://dannyayers.com/archives/002017.html
_"Now GIGO is an issue for the semantic web. If the web has proved anything it is that people spout garbage, and we need to mitigate that."_
I wish I could find a better way to pushback against this kind of suggestion without quoting (imo) an erroneous view, but I'm lazy or exhausted or this is quickest way to illustrate a point or whatever.
No, a computer is not a good tool to "mitigate" people spouting (imo) garbage like the above.
The next sentence is (imo) worse: _"Here FOAF provides a useful example: people say things about other people, and those might be defamitory, misleading, whatever."_
And no computer programmer in the world, afaik, is going to be able to develop a program that prevents people from being people, nor is there a need for such a program if it Could be written.
However, my main pushback against FOAF is not technical, btw. It is that FOAF automates the institution of "the good-ole-boy network". It's all about who you know, and now you don't even need to know the person! You know a few data elements about someone, exchange a couple e's, and automagically you become known!! Ain't this the best thing since whorled peas!!!
I think not.
One of the most interesting comments I've seen is from Mr. Bray, who has navigated the treacherous waters between academia and business much better than I.
However, this post may be too long for a comment already.
Mr. Ruby,
This is OT, but I find myself here. Your name, and that of Mr. John Patrick, came up over at the Scobleizer as being the only two IBM'rs known to blog. Dunno if it's so, but for all the claims of Blogaria being so much better at distributing quality info than mainstream journalism, I am skeptical.
Don't know if you heard of ECLipz.. not the one in the sky last night, but over yonder:
http://www.cbronline.com/research_centres/001474fdd63170d780256dd50037859a
Very oddly, this same article was never distributed to the 400 community, afaik, until last week along with a follow-up this evening:
http://www.midrangeserver.com/tfh/tfh111003-story01.html
Perhaps you are familiar with this, but in my experience most people within IBM do not want this info to get around within IBM, let alone to anyone else. I believe it's because there are so few IBM'rs blogging, but don't know.
You may also be interested in my blog-without-blogging here:
http://archive.midrange.com/isn-citizens/200311/msg00002.html
I would also be very interested to know if anyone in IBM is seriously discussing "World dominance". People in the Linux community, from what I've read many times in press and blogs and such, have stated this as a goal. Although I have heard Mr. Haines (known as "the heart and soul of the 400") say he "wants the 400 to get it's fair share of the market.. 100%!!". He's in marketing, and I believe is quite realistic about the possibility of that ever actually happening!
Just wondering, as I prepare to go back under the rock I crawled outta...;-) Wanted to get over to Don's place, but that ain't gonna happen.
(Should-a been more specific: I'd intended, first thing this morn, to get over to Don Park's to discuss landscapes, but alas...)
This interview "bugged" me a bit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3131562.stm
"GD: If you had an entire web that worked on this principle, you could have a digital organism that had a phenomenal amount of information"
We already have this and it doesn't scare me.
"and you have written that you're moving more in the direction then of an internet that can reason."
Some day, perhaps, depending on how one defines "reason".
"TBL: Computers will become so powerful and there will be so many of them with so much storage that they will in fact be more powerful or as powerful as a brain and will be able to write a program which is a big brain."
We have had computers that are computationally more powerful than a brain. The brain has a biochemical engine, which is pitifully slow when compared to the speed of light.
"And I think philosophically you can argue about it and spiritually you can argue about it, and I think in fact that may be true that you can make something as powerful as the brain,"
Already a done deal.
"really whether you can make the algorithms to make it work like a brain is something else.
But that is a long way off and in fact that's not very meaningful for now at all. All I'm looking for now is just interoperability for data."
Can't agree more.
I've not read all that much of Mr. Berners-Lee, but his reputation preceeds him. I've read a bit of Mr. Bray's and find myself agreeing with most-all. But for occasional small examples:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/Biz
"And yet, and yet, and yet; business is often a filthy practice. It encourages both vile venial and monstrous mortal sin. Most people who are successful CEOs are just not people you'd want to spend time with."
The few CEOs and execs I've known, from $10M to $2B, to a "man" have been pretty nice "guys" but maybe I'm just lucky or maybe it's because I've always lived in the MidWest or maybe I've almost always been involved in family-run companies. (The latter, btw, went to my wedding, as my ex-Wife and I met at the workplace.) Otherwise I agree with the piece.
Wrt Mr. Bray's post today:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/11/09/SemWebFirstStep
"So in the big picture, I think that (a) just because something hasn’t worked so far doesn’t mean it will go on not working, and (b) betting against Tim Berners-Lee is something that ought to make you feel nervous."
Again, I agree.
But, "if I was a betting man" which I'm not, I'd bet just about any amount of money (up to a box of donuts...;-) against Vannevar Bush:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm
"When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path."
That was then, these days we have various flavors of RDB.
"The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association."
Anybody that believes the human mind works one way is an idiot. It simultanously works in multiple (complementary/contradictory) ways.
"With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain."
I have very severe Sleep Apnea, and one of the symptoms is dreaming while not yet asleep. I can't say I can describe the associations I see in these dreams, but I can say it's not by any process of a web of trails. YMMV, of course.
"It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory."
OTOH, who has not experienced that trails that are frequently followed become habits, and are followed semi-consciously (at best).
"Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature."
Yep.
"Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage."
Prophetic, given the time. Again computers surpass in speed by a long shot, but have some catch-up to do in flexibility. And can "beat the mind decisively" (if one looks at it as a competition!) in regard to premanence, but that clarity issue is a whole 'nuther story at this point in the "game".
"He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome."
Can't agree more with conclusion, although some of the assumptions are blatantly false (imo).
Back to Mr. Bray's post, I'm also interested in metadata, and agree that XBRL is a no-brainer for reasons given.
But I cannot possibly agree more with this conclusion also:
"When what you’re doing feels like shooting fish in a barrel, you ought to be worried that things aren’t as simple as you think they are."
And I've grown weary of being the fish. Mr. Shiky has had years of practice at this kind-a stuff, but wonder if he feels somewhat likewise.
Since I'm way past done writing for tonight, (and very possibly for a long while, tho things change and, in fact, will), was going to post this and comments over at Joseph Duemmer's, but ain't since didn't get change to read post:
http://rw.blogspot.com/2003_05_01_rw_archive.html#200339633
If I understand RageBoy correctly (and that's cause for some alarm right there...;-)
http://www.rageboy.com/2003_11_02_blogger-archive.html#106819832802730520
Phylogeny recapitulates Ontology recapitulates Psychology.
But RageBoy wasn't as original as I'd thought, in research which recapitulated to which found:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v37n4/schultz.html
Imo, simply fascinating with, afaik, a lot of application to this very discussion.
and only started to skim Kipling:
http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/letter.htm
If any read this far, thank you for your patience. Sorry, no time to proof.
Geez Louise...! Talk about "Golbyesque" in length, if not quality.
But wanted to add that I regret saying anything about snake-oil salesman, because somebody is likely to infer I'm referring to them when I'm not. Least of which would be Mr. Berners-Lee and Mr. Bray with whom I expressed disagreements above.
Now RageBoy...;-)...
Anyhoo, sheesh and goodNITE...
JayT: Apologies for being unclear. What I intended to say was that we need to mitigate the effects of people saying false, defamatory (whatever) things. I see you read it as a call for computers acting as global censors - interesting concept for a sci-fi novel, but perhaps unrealistic :-)
Now in many foaf systems this is simply done by tracking who said what, and us fleshbags can make our own decisions based on the provenance of assertions. Perhaps computers could help, though I doubt very much that they could do all the work - mine's so dumb it thinks 'colour' is a misspelling, despite my assurances to the contrary, and that doesn't inspire confidence.
It's still garbage in, garbage out, but perhaps we can get to a stage where the I tell the computer a source tends to spout stupidty, and it will warn me not to trust its conclusions based on that source.
Le web sémantique est sûrement une des idées les plus prometteuses du moment mais aussi certainement la plus controversée. Et avec lui, ce sont les technologies crées pour lui par le W3C qui sont critiquées : RDF et OWL notamment.
Clay Shirky, a publi...
...Le web sémantique est sûrement une des idées les plus prometteuses du moment mais aussi certainement la plus controversée. Et avec lui, ce sont les technologies crées pour lui par le W3C qui sont critiquées : RDF et OWL notamment.
Clay Shirky, a publi...
...