Acorns

April 7th, 2006

From Jamie Pitts an article in the Guardian Spread the Word, and Join Up. In it, Tim Berners-Lee is quoted from a recent talk about new directions in RDF and the Semantic Web. I can agree with him when he says, The nice thing about RDF data is you can merge it.

More than a 'nice' thing–to me, it's the key to the concept, and what sets it apart from any other data model.

Tim B-L goes on to talk about new directions in semantic web effort, including getting data out on the web:

Berners-Lee did concede that as with the world wide web, the semantic web should "serve useful stuff". "One of the problems we've actually had with the semantic web, I only recently realised, is we haven't been doing that."

Not enough useful RDF data has been left online, he explained: "The whole value-add of the web is serendipitous re-use: when you put it out there for one person, and it gets used by who-knows-who. We want to put data out there for one purpose, then find it gets linked into all kinds of data. And that's been not happening, because we forgot 'serve useful stuff', not to mention 'make useful links'."

It's a direction many of us have followed, without necessarily any positive acknowledgement from the greater Semantic Web community. I can read with relief the new directions Tim B-L perceives, but then I'm puzzled when he continues with:

Berners-Lee told his audience in Oxford that the semantic web has already been adopted in drug discovery in life sciences, where solutions represent cures for diseases. "People in these fields are bright and intelligent, they are early adopters, they have quite a lot of money to throw at a problem," he said. "We have an incubator community there."

Genome data could be extremely helpful for the medical community, but I wouldn't necessarily see this as a way to make RDF ubiquitous. I would wish that the W3C would stop focusing on Grand and Glorious data uses. We all can't be research scientists.

Comments
1
dave rogers - 9:09 am 4/7/2006

We all can’t be research scientists.

Rats. Another dream dashed.

Maybe I can still be a Ghostbuster?

"Back off man. We're scientists."

2
Chimezie - 9:56 am 4/7/2006

Adoption of RDF in drug discovery in life sciences are not examples of 'Grand and Glorious data uses'. That's an oversimplification of an important avenue for RDF adoption (in a field where data semantics has more value than in any other). The W3C's (and Oracl's) recent focus on Health and Life sciences is a good technology/business/evangelism move

3
Shelley - 4:54 pm 4/7/2006

I know Dave. Life is full of crushed dreams.

Chimezie, if the hope is to make semantic data defined in RDF ubiquitous, than focusing on specialized industries with large budgets and high trained personnel is not the way to do it.

Did the web grow because of the scientific uses? Or because a bunch of people figured out how to create a web page for fun? The end result was of advantage to both.

Those of us who are pushing street RDF do get a little tired of hearing about how the Semantic Web people were wrong with their original approach–what they need to do is attach themselves to a multi-million (billion) dollar industry with Really Smart people.

I think it's terrific that the genome people are putting their data online. But I find the MusicBrainz data to be more useful.

4
Aristotle Pagaltzis - 2:16 am 4/8/2006

Did the web grow because of the scientific uses? Or because a bunch of people figured out how to create a web page for fun?

Well, it was the scientists who first used the current web, no? It only took off big when the for-fun guys came in, but their first wave landed because of the attraction of what the scientists were doing.

It reminds me of Linus’ philosophy: things people do are motivated initially by survival, then by social purposes, and eventually by recreation.

The MusicBrainz data isn’t useless, but noone but those who’re already believers is going to much care for the SemWeb if that’s all they find on it. You want people using it for survival, at first, to draw in people who have no particular opinion about the technology and care only about purposes. Some of them will then discover that it can be used for social purposes and will take advantage of that. And then some of those doing so will find that it can be just fun.

That’s how the snowball works. It doesn’t really have to do with billions of dollars and Really Smart people – these things just happen to coincide with the survival purpose in the case of medical data, but they’re not the necessary precondition.

5
Shelley - 8:28 am 4/8/2006

I am not saying this is either/or Aristotle. Great that the health science folks are using RDF and putting it on the web. But if Tim B-L only acknowledges efforts like this in the future, he's going to find basically he and his dreams have been left behind as the rest of us sully his utopian vision with our dirty little bits.

6
Aristotle Pagaltzis - 11:51 am 4/8/2006

Sully on, I say.

Getting dirty is the fun part of life, right?

Thanks to all those who have contributed to the discussion. Comments are now closed, but you can contact the author of the post directly.

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