future of the internets
December 5, 2006 12:39 AM Subscribe
RDF and the Semantic Web
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
Tim Berners-Lee
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
Tim Berners-Lee
This post was deleted for the following reason: this is several years old and was posted here when it first came out.
Isn't this article five years old? And why link to Berners-Lee when you could have linked to the wiki article on Semantic Web? Sigh.
posted by allen.spaulding at 1:18 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by allen.spaulding at 1:18 AM on December 5, 2006
expert in sociology he is not, but i would imagine there are many of those kinds of people working with him. if you've got an hour or so, tb-l he does a nice job explaining the whole thing in this video.
posted by localhuman at 1:25 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by localhuman at 1:25 AM on December 5, 2006
*goes to wiki, copies link, pastes, , goes to bed regretting not having read the date in the top left corner of linked article*
posted by localhuman at 1:28 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by localhuman at 1:28 AM on December 5, 2006
I love the semantic web. My internet-enabled refrigerator can automatically order groceries online from webvan.
posted by schwong at 2:05 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by schwong at 2:05 AM on December 5, 2006
three blind mice: a transfer protocol is not the same as an indexing system.
posted by gene_machine at 2:12 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by gene_machine at 2:12 AM on December 5, 2006
Double. And also All your semantic web are belong to google (with a whole bunch of interesting comments). That's ok though. I hadn't read it before and it is a pet interest of mine.
posted by sluglicker at 2:16 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by sluglicker at 2:16 AM on December 5, 2006
...and all watched over by machines of loving grace.
(right now, please!)
posted by exlotuseater at 2:58 AM on December 5, 2006
(right now, please!)
posted by exlotuseater at 2:58 AM on December 5, 2006
We will likely get more "intelligence agents" than "intelligent agents" analyzing the "transactions between people and computers". If you value the freedom of the pod people, being constantly monitored and tracked is probably a small price to pay. If you don't, the trick will be maintaining any right to privacy as the web becomes more pervasive. Groups like PRIME might be of some help, but it's going to be an up hill climb.
posted by crispynubbins at 5:37 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by crispynubbins at 5:37 AM on December 5, 2006
yes crispy, there is also Anonymizer, a somewhat creepily named internet privacy/security firm. is it time to go Dark?
posted by localhuman at 6:00 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by localhuman at 6:00 AM on December 5, 2006
The main problem in all of this is figuring out how to prevent people from subverting the system. With a trusting computer system even if 99.9% of the people either want it to work or are neutral, that last tenth of a percent can really fuck things up. Just look at all the spam and SEO garbage out there. My guess is a semantic web without a trust mechanism would be basically useless.
Still, it could be pretty useful for large sites contributed too by accountable people.
posted by delmoi at 7:20 AM on December 5, 2006
Still, it could be pretty useful for large sites contributed too by accountable people.
posted by delmoi at 7:20 AM on December 5, 2006
The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
And then the pixies will fly out and sprinkle us with their magic dust. And we will be able to eat what we want and never get fat, and drink what we want and never get hung over. And Iraq will be a success and global warming will reverse and all will be happiness and joy.
I was an agent researcher at MIT. I've used RDF. I worked at Google. I know something about this stuff. The sad thing about all the semantic web nonsense is that what we have now actually works pretty well. You don't need a magical world of semantic markup and intelligent software to derive real value. You just need some simple stuff, sub-AI. Hell, look at how tags have made delicious and flickr work so well! I assure you if they were trying to do things with well formed RDF documents, no one would be using it.
Cyc has been in development for 22 years. It's still useless.
posted by Nelson at 8:59 AM on December 5, 2006 [2 favorites]
And then the pixies will fly out and sprinkle us with their magic dust. And we will be able to eat what we want and never get fat, and drink what we want and never get hung over. And Iraq will be a success and global warming will reverse and all will be happiness and joy.
I was an agent researcher at MIT. I've used RDF. I worked at Google. I know something about this stuff. The sad thing about all the semantic web nonsense is that what we have now actually works pretty well. You don't need a magical world of semantic markup and intelligent software to derive real value. You just need some simple stuff, sub-AI. Hell, look at how tags have made delicious and flickr work so well! I assure you if they were trying to do things with well formed RDF documents, no one would be using it.
Cyc has been in development for 22 years. It's still useless.
posted by Nelson at 8:59 AM on December 5, 2006 [2 favorites]
The sad thing about all the semantic web nonsense is that what we have now actually works pretty well.
For what purposes? With how much human involvement?
Put another way: How much work would you have to do to make your phone automatically turn down the volume on the stereo? And what tools would you use to do it?
Whether the "semantic web" is the best way to accomplish this goal might be a more apt discussion point than this endless sniggering and nay-saying. A more interesting response, for example, might be that it makes more sense to establish quasi-universal APIs, rather than creating meta-languages that allow machines to negotiate their own APIs on the fly.
posted by lodurr at 9:54 AM on December 5, 2006
For what purposes? With how much human involvement?
Put another way: How much work would you have to do to make your phone automatically turn down the volume on the stereo? And what tools would you use to do it?
Whether the "semantic web" is the best way to accomplish this goal might be a more apt discussion point than this endless sniggering and nay-saying. A more interesting response, for example, might be that it makes more sense to establish quasi-universal APIs, rather than creating meta-languages that allow machines to negotiate their own APIs on the fly.
posted by lodurr at 9:54 AM on December 5, 2006
Jorn has some stuff to say about the semantic web.
I think he's gone awol from Robot Wisdom again, though.
posted by Area Control at 11:05 AM on December 5, 2006
I think he's gone awol from Robot Wisdom again, though.
posted by Area Control at 11:05 AM on December 5, 2006
When I can control my stereo with my cell phone via the Semantic Web, all the age old dreams of human intelligence set free from this tawdry plane shall be fulfilled. We shall be as platonic gods set loose from the bonds of physical markup and existence - free to become the Angels or Demons we have dreamed of so long. Free to usher in a new age of Thought Wrought Pure.
posted by freebird at 11:36 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by freebird at 11:36 AM on December 5, 2006
If you want you phone to turn down the volume on a stereo, just build it. Given the lack of standard and open APIs it's a bit of a pain right now; best bet is an IR emitter with universal remote codes to control the stereo, and some phone app that either emits the IR directly (if you have line of sight) or squirts a bluetooth command out to something that does have an IR emitter pointed at the stereo.
The hard thing in the phone/stereo example is not semantics, it's plumbing. That's what's always true. The miracle of the web is that all that you had to do was solve the plumbing problem in the right way and the semantics problems disappeared.
Quasi-universal APIs with meta-languages and machine negotiation is all nonsense. I know, I spent years trying to build them.
posted by Nelson at 11:41 AM on December 5, 2006
The hard thing in the phone/stereo example is not semantics, it's plumbing. That's what's always true. The miracle of the web is that all that you had to do was solve the plumbing problem in the right way and the semantics problems disappeared.
Quasi-universal APIs with meta-languages and machine negotiation is all nonsense. I know, I spent years trying to build them.
posted by Nelson at 11:41 AM on December 5, 2006
Sounds like somebody needs to read Accelerando. (Stross, Charlie)
posted by avriette at 11:49 AM on December 5, 2006
posted by avriette at 11:49 AM on December 5, 2006
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This whole article is incomprehensible babble. Berners-Lee invented an indexing system. Good on him. But how does this qualify him in any was as an expert on sociology?
posted by three blind mice at 1:03 AM on December 5, 2006