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The Semantic Web
(SW) is an interesting idea. I remember first reading about it in Berners-Lee
worthwhile book "Weaving the Web". The idea of tying together (in a
machine-processable way) disparate sets of data across websites is an obvious
goal to work toward. The use of the term 'semantic' is a bit of a stretch, in my
mind. Technically, it is correct, as they are using it in the same sense as
Model Theory (MT) uses the term 'semantic'. (To be clear, these are not
'models' in the Rosennean sense.) See the Introduction of the RDF Semantics
specs:
However, both MT and SW implement their
notion of semantics by use a of a formal syntactic metalanguage; this
metalanguage simply provides additional syntactic rules and specifications for
algorithmically processing the syntactic symbols (i.e., syntactic symbols in MT,
syntactic tags in SW). So, 'semantics' are added by providing
additional syntactic symbols and algorithms as referents which are
beyond the scope of the initial symbol set and algorithms. The RDF
provides the metalanguage for SW to accomplish this. But, then, clearly the
question arises about how to now relate data according to their specifications
in the RDF itself: what are the semantics for the RDF tags themselves? This
requires additional syntactic layers added on of things like
hierarchies and thesauri, which has already become part of the
plan....Berners-Lee mentions them here:
Ultimately, this
kind of syntactic regression cannot lead to a true semantics in the sense
in which human natural language has a semantics. Like Number Theory, small
portions of natural language can be rendered syntactically, but the resultant
portions constitute a patchwork that is only feebly resembling the original
whole.
I'm not trying to
slam the Semantic Web as a technical or practical possibility....I just think
that it is a bit misleading and an exaggeration that they chose
to call it 'Semantic'.
Regards,
Tim
Hi Everyone,
I came across this today. It's news to me, although you guys may
have known about it for a long time already! Just in case, I thought I'd post
it.
There is a "Semantic Web" in development that is intended to make
scientific research easier and data sharing and retrieval more streamlined in
process. I haven't gotten all the particulars, yet, but here are a few
links:
The Semantic Web seeks to augment the current Web of linked documents
with a Web of linked data. Today, Web users follow links from document to
document in a largely manual process. Tomorrow, semantically-enabled links
will enable both human users, and human users assisted by computers, to
navigated these links and find the information they are looking for. At the
heart of the Semantic Web is the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Much the same way that
HTML is the language that helped initiate the original Web, RDF is a framework
for supporting resource description, or metadata (data about data), for the
Web. RDF provides common structures that can be used for interoperable XML
data exchange. RDF follows the W3C design
principles of interoperability, evolution, and
decentralization.
The Semantic Web Activity is charged to both continue the development
of the RDF family of technical standards, and to engage in advanced develop
activities that explore pre-commercial applications of these technologies in
preparation for later standardization. To reach its full potential, the Web
must becomes a place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools
as well as by people. Not only is Semantic Web technology important for the
evolution of the Web in general, but also it has a critical role to play in
making the Web capable of addressing public policy challenges.
Interesting stuff! In one of the links, above, there is some
discussion about "intellectual property rights" issues, which is always
a big concern when information sharing, scientific innovation,
and potential or realized applications are involved.
Judith
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