Semantic Web: Optimists Meet Pessimists

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Semantic Web Optimists Meet Pessimists

• Presented by
• Yin Xiong
• CSCI 8351
• 02/04/2004

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Prologue

• Presenting, not representing
• Critiquing, not attacking
• Description, not prescription
• A vision, not an oracle
• Empirical, not theoretical
• Questions, not answers

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Outline

• Pessimists
• - Clay Shirky The Semantic Web,
  Syllogism, and Worldview
• - Cory Doctorow Metacrap Putting the
  torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia
• Optimists
• - Danny Ayers Shirkys Men of Straw
• - Dan Brickley Your SW Piece
• Semantic Web Visions Missions
• References

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1. Pessimists Semantic Web
Mission Impossible
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Clay Shirky

• The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview
• http//www.shirky.com/writings/semantic_syllogism
  .html
• What is the Semantic Web good for?
• The simple answer is this The Semantic Web
  is a machine for creating syllogisms.
• Syllogisms are Not Very Useful
• - The creator of shirky.com lives in
  Brooklyn - People who live in Brooklyn speak
  with a Brooklyn accent
• ( Shirky would pronounce shirky.com as
  shoiky.com" )
• We Describe The World In Generalities
• People who live in France speak French

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Clay Shirky

• The Semantic Webs proposed use
• Q How do you buy a book over the Semantic Web?
  A You browse/query until you find a suitable
  offer to sell the book you want. You add
  information to the Semantic Web saying that you
  accept the offer and giving details (your name,
  shipping address, credit card information, etc).
  Of course you add it (1) with access control so
  only you and seller can see it, and (2) you store
  it in a place where the seller can easily get it,
  perhaps the seller's own server, (3) you notify
  the seller about it. You wait or query for
  confirmation that the seller has received your
  acceptance, and perhaps (later) for shipping
  information, etc. http//www.w3.org/2002/03/semwe
  b/
• -- This example sets the pattern for
  descriptions of the Semantic Web. First, take
  some well-known problem. Next, misconstrue it so
  that the hard part is made to seem trivial and
  the trivial part hard. Finally, congratulate
  yourself for solving the trivial part.

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Clay Shirky

• Meta-data is Not A Panacea
• - US citizens are people - The First
  Amendment covers the rights of US citizens -
  Nike is protected by the First Amendment
• ( You could conclude from this that Nike is
  a person )
• Ontology is Not A Requirement
• people can share data without having to share
  a worldview, so we got the meta-data without
  needing the ontology
• Artificial Intelligence Reborn
• (first goal being metadata) The second, and
  larger goal, however, is to take up the old
  Artificial Intelligence project in a new
  context.
• Since it's hard to make machines think about
  the world, the new goal is to describe the world
  in ways that are easy for machines to think
  about.

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Clay Shirky

• Worldviews Differ For Good Reasons
• Soviet library's cataloging system Works of
  the classical authors of Marxism-Leninism
• Melvyl Dewey lumped all books about
  non-Christian religions into a single category,
  listed last among books about religion
• (different assumptions)
• Worse is Better
• 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.
• success story of Ethernet, Token
  Ring etc.
• simple implementation

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Cory Doctorow

• Metacrap.
• A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would
  be a utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on
  self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically
  inflated market opportunities.
• seven insurmountable obstacles between the world
  as we know it and meta-utopia
• 1. people lie
• 2. people are lazy
• 3. people are stupid
• 4. Mission Impossible -- know thyself
• 5. Schemas aren't neutral
• 6. Metrics influence results
• 7. There's more than one way to describe
  something

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2. Optimists/Doers Semantic Web We
are Working on it
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Danny Ayers

• Shirkys Men of Straw. http//dannyayers.com/arc
  hives/002017.html
• Shirky constructed his straw men
• Shirky is highly selective and misleading in his
  quotes.
• This example sets the pattern for Shirky's
  descriptions of the Semantic Web. First, take a
  quote referring to some well-known problem. Next,
  misquote it so that the hard part is made to seem
  trivial and the trivial part hard. Now it's
  safely out of context, hack it to pieces.
  Finally, congratulate yourself for demonstrating
  the ignorance of Semantic Web advocates.
• For most developers the Semantic Web vision is
  completely irrelevant. It's a nice idea, but has
  little to do with day-to-day coding. But being
  able to decently model data which doesn't fall
  into neat lists or trees, being able to reuse
  systems, interoperability - these are important
  considerations. These are where Semantic Web
  technologies can be really useful. Today.

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Dan Brickley

• Your SW piece. http//lists.w3.org/Archives/Publ
  ic/www-archive/2003Nov/0010.html
• (Working on RDF and Semantic Web technology at
  W3C)
• The Semantic Web project, viewed as an effort to
  make it easier to publish, mix, share and consume
  data on the Web, depends on logic in pretty much
  the same way SQL or UML depend on logic.
• Many RDF apps get by perfectly well without any
  fancy inference rule machinery, exploiting the
  RDF data model as a handy mechanism for mixing
  independently created data vocabularies.
• SW is not working toward a global ontology
• RDF vocabularies can be freely mixed together in
  data without prior agreement.
• RDF's design makes it easier to pick'n'mix
  pragmatically from various pre-existing
  vocabularies, adding in extensions and
  qualifications of your own where needed.

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Mark Canter

• Enough complaining. Lets get on with doing.
  http//blogs.it/0100198/2003/11/08.htmla1964
• If you talk about something before it's done,
  it's liable to have huge gaping holes in it But
  this is where we divide up the world between
  doers and talkers

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3. Pessimists Optimists Semantic Web
Visions Missions
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Talkers Doers
You dont see the mountain because you are
inside it. - - Ancient Chinese Poet
Talking reading, researching, thinking,
theorizing, rationalizing -- big
picture Doing designing, coding, experimenting,
testing, -- details
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Where is Semantic Web Supposed to Be?
Fjljf lfjds lfdj
Arbitrator? Mediator? Processor? Translator?
?? ?? ??
World
?? ??
Semantic Web
Conceptualization specification
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Expectations Too High ? Pessimists

• Semantic Web lie detector morality
  enhancer world view equalizer logic teacher
  panacea
• People lie, people lazy, people stupid
• World view differ for good reason
• people like to use generalization

Mission Impossible
The web is a place where anybody can say anything
about anybody and anything
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World View Differ, People Lie,So What?

• World view differ
• - different conceptualization co-exist
• - Competition enhance quality, increase
  chances
• - merge, change, appear, disappear
• - survival of the fittest
• People lie
• - for human user to judge
• - credit checking, trusted web,

Semantic Web is like a multi-lingual translator
between different conceptualizations A.dictator
B.national leader
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Current Web Mission
Motivation

• User
• Search
• Buy stuff
• Find stuff
• Download stuff

• Author
• Publish
• Sell stuff
• Share info
• writer complex
• ...

Web
user-friendly searching and authoring tools
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Semantic Web Mission

• User
• Search
• Buy stuff
• Find stuff
• Download stuff

• Author
• Publish
• Sell stuff
• Share info
• writer complex
• ...

Semantic Web
Method easier Quality better Search area
larger Search result smaller
User-friendly tools No more difficult than now
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Semantic Web its Users
What You want to find
Current web
Search area
Query result
Query Books by Hemingway ? All books by
Hemingway, Nothing but books by Hemingway
Semantic Web
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Semantic Web its Authors

• ?????
• Type annotations?
• Graphical tools for drag-and-drop?
• Automatic annotation generator? How?
• -- harder part of the Semantic Web make the Web
  both human-friendly and machine-friendly

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Current Web its Authors
Compose in MS-word, ppt, Excel, then save as
web page
User-friendly
Use page generators (FrontPage, Dreamweaver)
Code in HTML
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Semantic Web its Authors
User-friendly Machine-friendly
Compose in MS-word, ppt, Excel, then save as
Semantic web page
Use GUI annotators (AnnoX, OntoY, )
Code in RDF, OWL (down to the machine)
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References

• Clay Shirky. The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and
  Worldview. http//www.shirky.com/writings/semanti
  c_syllogism.html
• Gory Doctorow. Metacrap Putting the torch to
  seven straw-men of the meta-utopia.
  http//www.well.com/doctorow/metacrap.htm
• Danny Ayers. Shirkys Men of Straw.
  http//dannyayers.com/archives/002017.html
• Dan Brickley. your SW pieace.
  http//lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/20
  03Nov/0010.html
• Marc Canter. Enough complaining. Lets get on
  with doing. http//blogs.it/0100198/2003/11/08.ht
  mla1964.