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[REBOL] Re: The Semantic Web - A solution?

From: t-man:onemain at: 13-Apr-2001 1:49

howdy-- I have been following Berners-Lee's "semantic web" idea for at least a year now. Tim is a great read, and I wish he'd write more, but I think he's a little too dreamy about his semantic web. The fact is that people are much better at making sense of data than computers or networks or standards or ____ will be for a long while, and when that long while is up, it will likely be unnoticable to most. I can't begin to imagine the stupid amount of endless tagging and validation and resource descripting that will have to occur for the current scheme for all of that to yield a simple "Oh, yeah?" button. I'd still be deciding for myself anyway. The Semantic Web is a universal space for anything which can be expressed in classical logic. --TBL http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Rules.html I think I'd rather have a "What for?" button, myself. And most importantly a way to ask somebody I trust, RIGHT NOW, regardless of where they are or what they are doing. Email is sorta slick that way, newsgroups and lists are, too. But instant messaging from my current device to that person's device is really the ticket. Text is almost always more efficient and more considerate of peoples' time. My semantic web is already up and running, and I suspect that most peoples' are. It's simply the infrastructure that ties the knowledge and reasoning power of those I trust together. That is a force that the semantic web will not surpass anytime soon. REBOL is a fantastic agency for a real semantic web. Not one that tries to prove things to itself, but one that brings people together in a way that maximizes collaborative efforts and minimizes the ill effects of old business practices like the telephone and meetings and airline flights and commutes. The web has proven that what is truly valuable is attention, and attention takes time and anything that saves that goes straight to productivity. TBL, is in the clouds at 50,000 feet or something: Instead of asking machines to understand people's language, it involves asking people to make the extra effort. http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/RDFnot.html I don't want to make the extra effort, personally. I don't think there's a payoff for the extra effort. Sure, it makes the web look prettier from the clouds, but I'd rather see a million bots with a basic concept of how to parse a sentence out looking for answers to my questions than a quadrillion pages with extra markup. Sure, if there were a standard that all documents adhered to that would aid these bots, then that would be cool. The old-fashioned standard of sentences and paragraphs and titles and sections and outlines, etc. I don't think any more writing between the lines is going to be solving anything. I keep hitting my "What for?" button, and nothing's coming back. REBOL is conquering first, because it won't have to explain why. Carl put it very politely, and now that I re-read his post at the bottom it seems I'm just reiterating what he has already said (terser, too, of course :-) T ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Brownell" <[depotcity--telus--net]> To: "Rebol List" <[rebol-list--rebol--com]> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 2:08 AM Subject: [REBOL] Re: The Semantic Web - A solution?
> Personally, I don't see how XML and the Semantic web will gel? It
would require endless streams of coding to get my Rebol powered agent (http://www.LFReD.com ) to get all these disconnected ontologies and tags etc etc. to work together. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but the complexity of it all is daunting. The more complex it becomes, the less likely the majority would/could be bothered with it.
> Carl said "It's better to conquer first, then explain why later." > > I propose a "Rebol Semantic Standard"... a universal Rebol "ontology"
if you will, that at least Rebols can agree on.
> What do you think? > > Terry Brownell > Orion Alliance Inc. > > Some additional thoughts... > > The basic premise of the Semantic web is sound... subject, verb and
object.
> I tend to use subject and predicate for simplicity and scope. > > Lets look at Carls example... > > "mix until well distributed" > Now I don't know about you, but the word that comes to mind is
blend .
> Blend is a predicate... It means "to mix together" it could be written
thus...
> blend: ["to mix" "blend" "stir together" etc etc.] > > If "blend" becomes too general, then additional, more industry
specific predicates could be added.
> "To Blend" is a universal predicate and spans across any language in
the universe. To "mix until well distributed" means the same thing no matter how you say it. We could call it "Snortlock" as long as we all agree to the meaning.