On 11/12/10 1:31 PM, Patrick Durusau wrote:
Kingsley,
On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 10:12 -0500, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
On 11/12/10 8:40 AM, Patrick Durusau wrote:
Kingsley,
On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 07:58 -0500, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
On 11/12/10 5:59 AM, Patrick Durusau wrote:
<snip>
Patrick / Dave,
I am hoping as the responses come in we might pick up something. There
is certainly some confusion out there.
Note my comments yesterday re. URIs and Referents. I believe this
association to be 1:1, but others may not necessarily see it so.
Isn't it that "...others may not necessarily see it so." that lies at
the heart of semantic ambiguity?
Yes!
We are perpetuating ambiguity by conflating realms, ultimately. The Web
of URLs != Web of URIs. They are mutually inclusive (symbiotic).
Err, no, we are not "perpetuating ambiguity." Ambiguity isn't a choice,
it is an operating condition.
I believe that conflating realms increases ambiguity, maybe that's a
little clearer?
Semantic ambiguity isn't going to go away. It is part and parcel of the
very act of communication.
This is why Context is King.
You can use Context to reduce ambiguity.
A good Comedian is a great Context flipper, for instance.
Ambiguity exists in the real-world too, we use Context to disambiguate
every second of our lives.
Eh? True enough but context in the "real-world" (do computers exist in a
make believe world?) is as unbounded as the subjects we talk about.
In our world there are computers, and from computers we have a sense of
"cypberspace", the Web, the Internet, even InterWeb, for instance.
It is the journal I am reading that is part of the "context" I am using
for a particular article or is it the author or is it the subject matter
or is it the sentence just before the one I am reading?
You make context out of that otherwise it would all be incomprehensible.
I can't fashion or construct your "context halo", I do sense its
existence though :-)
All of those, at times some of those and at still other times, other
things will inform my context.
But you will use a specific context for data comprehension otherwise
there would be no information (context driven perception of data).
It is true that is very limited circumstances with very few semantics,
such as TCP/IP, that is it possible to establish reliable communications
across multiple recipients. (Or it might be more correct to say
semantics of concern to such a small community that agreement is
possible. I will have to pull Stevens off the shelf to see.)
As the amount of semantics increases (or the size of the community), so
does the potential for and therefore the amount of semantic ambiguity.
(I am sure someone has published that as some ratio but I don't recall
the reference.)
So if a community believes in self-describing data, where the data is
the conveyor of context, why shouldn't it be able express such believes
in its own best practice options?
Great point! A community that subscribes to self-describing data, so
dog-food self-describing data. Yes!!
Basically, we can solve ambiguity in
the context of Linked Data oriented applications. Of course, that
doesn't apply to applications that don't grok Linked Data or buy into
the semantic fidelity expressed by the content of a structured data
bearing (carrying) resource e.g. one based on EAV model + HTTP URI based
Names.
Not to be offensive but are you familiar with "begging the question?"
You are assuming that "...we can solve ambiguity in the context of
Linked Data oriented applications."*
A Linked Data application is capable of perceiving an E-A-V graph
representation of data. That's context it can establish from content.
That is the *issue* at hand and cannot be assumed to be true, lest we
all run afoul of "begging the question" issues.
Hope you are having a great day!
Yes :-)
Patrick
*Your "Linked Data Application* may supply context but that *is not*
interchangeable with other "Linked Data Applications."
Nor does it reduce ambiguity.
Again EAV or SPO based data should be unambiguous to any Linked Data
aware application.
Why?
For the same reason in both cases, there is no basis on which context
can be associated with identification. Remember, the URI is the
identifier. (full stop)
See comment above.
Fix it so that URI plus *specified* properties in RDF graph identify a
subject, then you have a chance to reduce (not eliminate) ambiguity. Not
as a matter of personal whimsy but as part of a standard that everyone
follows.
Again, you've just described the essence of the matter re. what is
current tagged Ian's solution.
Links:
1. http://goo.gl/6ozSv -- URI Debugger view of the Document at:
http://dbpedia.org/page/Paris (crystal clear to a user agents across
various levels of semantic-fidelity and metadata sources e.g. HTTP
response headers)
--
Regards,
Kingsley Idehen
President& CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen
