Kingsley,
Citing your own bookmark file hardly qualifies as market numbers. People
promoting technologies make up all sorts of numbers about what use of X
will save. Reminds me of the music or software theft numbers. They have
no relationship to any reality that I share.
It's been enjoyable as usual but without some common basis for
discussion we aren't going to get any closer to a common understanding.
Hope you are having a great week!
Patrick
On 8/18/2011 3:24 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
On 8/18/11 2:50 PM, Patrick Durusau wrote:
Kingsley,
On 8/18/2011 1:52 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
On 8/18/11 1:40 PM, Patrick Durusau wrote:
Kingsley,
From below:
This critical value only materializes via appropriate "context
lenses". For decision makers it is always via opportunity costs.
If someone else is eating you lunch by disrupting your market you
simply have to respond. Thus, on this side of the fence its better
to focus on eating lunch rather than warning about the possibility
of doing so, or outlining how it could be done. Just do it!
I appreciate the sentiment, "Just do it!" as my close friend Jack
Park says it fairly often.
But "Just do it!" doesn't answer the question of cost/benefit.
I mean: just start eating the lunch i.e., make a solution that takes
advantage of an opportunity en route to market disruption. Trouble
with the Semantic Web is that people spend too much time arguing and
postulating. Ironically, when TimBL worked on the early WWW, his
mindset was: just do it! :-)
Still dodging the question I see. ;-)
Of course not.
You want market research numbers, see the related section at the end
of this reply. I sorta assumed you would have found this
serendipitously though? Ah! You don't quite believe in the utility of
this Linked Data stuff etc..
It avoids it in favor of advocacy.
See my comments above. You are skewing my comments to match you
desired outcome, methinks.
You reach that conclusion pretty frequently.
See my earlier comment.
I ask for hard numbers, you say that isn't your question and/or
skewing your comments.
Yes. I didn't know this was about market research and numbers [1].
Example: Privacy controls and Facebook. How much would it cost to
solve this problem?
I assume you know the costs of the above.
It won't cost north of a billion dollars to make a WebID based
solution. In short, such a thing has existed for a long time,
depending on your "context lenses" .
I assume everyone here is familiar with: http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebID ?
So we need to take the number of users who have a WebID and subtract
that from the number of FaceBook users.
Yes?
No!
Take the number of people that have are members of a service that's
ambivalent to the self calibration of the vulnerabilities of its
members aka. privacy.
The remaining number need a WebID or some substantial portion, yes?
Ultimately they need a WebID absolutely! And do you know why? It will
enable members begin the inevitable journey towards self calibration
of their respective vulnerabilities.
I hope you understand that society is old and the likes of G+, FB are
new and utterly immature. In society, one is innocent until proven
guilty or not guilty. In the world of FB and G+ the fundamentals of
society are currently being inverted. Anyone can ultimately say
anything about you. Both parties are building cyber police states via
their respective silos. Grr... don't get me going on this matter.
Every single netizen needs a verifiable identifier. That's the bottom
line, and WebID (courtesy of Linked Data) and Trust Semantics nails
the issue.
So who bears that cost? Each of those users? It cost each of them
something to get a WebID. Yes?
Look here is a real world example. Just google up on wire shark re.
Facebook and Google. Until the wire shark episodes both peddled lame
excuses for not using HTTPS. Today both use HTTPS. Do you want to know
why? Simple answer: opportunity cost of not doing so became palpable.
What is their benefit from getting that WebID? Will it outweigh their
cost in their eyes?
See comment above.
We've already witnessed Craigslist horrors. But all of this is child's
play if identity isn't fixed on the InterWeb. If you think I need to
give you market numbers for that too, then I think we are simply
talking past ourselves (a common occurence).
Then, what increase in revenue will result from solving it?
FB -- less vulnerability and bleed.
Startups or Smartups: massive opportunity to make sales by solving a
palpable problem.
Or if Facebook's lunch is going to be eaten, say by G+, then why
doesn't G+ solve the problem?
G+ is trying to do just that, but in the wrong Web dimension. That's
why neither G+ nor FB have been able to solve the identity
reconciliation riddle.
Maybe you share your observations with G and FB. ;-)
Hmm. wondering how you've concluded either way :-)
Seriously, I don't think they are as dumb as everyone seems to think.
I haven't characterized them as dumb. I would put this in the careless
and ambivalent bucket.
It may well be they have had this very discussion and decided it
isn't cost effective to address.
See my earlier comments. Or just look at the G+ "real names" imbroglio.
Are privacy controls are a non-problem?
Your "context lenses."
True, you can market a product/service that no one has ever seen
before. Like pet rocks.
And they "just did it!"
With one important difference.
Their *doing it* did not depend upon the gratuitous efforts of
thousands if not millions of others.
Don't quite get your point. I am talking about a solution that
starts off with identity reconciliation, passes through access
control lists, and ultimately makes virtues of heterogeneous data
virtualization clearer re. data integration pain alleviation.
In the above we have a market place north of 100 Billion Dollars.
Yes, but your solution: "...starts off with identity reconciliation..."
See comments above about WebID and Trust Logic. It just another way of
referring to the issues that have resulted in outputs from the
Semantic Web Project.
Sure, start with the critical problem already solved and you really
are at a "...market place north of 100 Billion Dollars...", but that
is all in your imagination.
See my earlier comments. And for your numbers, see links below.
Having a system of assigned and reconciled WebIDs isn't a zero cost
to users or businesses solution. It is going to cost someone to
assign and reconcile those WebIDs. Yes?
You can buy a solution that post installation will make and reconcile
all kinds of identifiers including those that serve are WebIDs for
humans or agents.
Since it is your solution, may I ask who is going to pay that cost?
Companies have been paying for it already, for quite some time :-) I
am not speculating, simply sharing perspective re. what commercial
opportunities exist when you grok the Semantic Web Project stack and
the application of its output to solutions that solve real problems.
Isn't that an important distinction?
Yes, and one that has never been lost on me :-)
Interested to hear your answer since that distinction has never been
lost on you.
Links:
1. http://www.delicious.com/kidehen/market_research -- I am sure you
can filter through
Kingsley
Patrick
Kingsley
Hope you are having a great day!
Patrick
On 8/18/2011 10:54 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
On 8/18/11 10:25 AM, Patrick Durusau wrote:
Kingsley,
Your characterization of "problems" is spot on:
On 8/18/2011 9:01 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
<snip>
Linked Data addresses many real world problems. The trouble is
that problems are subjective. If you have experienced a problem
it doesn't exist. If you don't understand a problem it doesn't
exist. If you don't know a problem exists then again it doesn't
exist in you context.
But you left out: The recognized "problem" must *cost more* than
the cost of addressing it.
Yes. Now in my case I assumed the above to be implicit when
context is about a solution or solutions :-)
If a solution costs more than the problem, it is a problem^n
matter. No good.
A favorable cost/benefit ratio has to be recognized by the people
being called upon to make the investment in solutions.
Always! Investment evaluation 101 for any business oriented
decision maker.
That is recognition of a favorable cost/benefit ratio by the W3C
and company is insufficient.
Yes?
Yes-ish. And here's why. Implementation cost is a tricky factor,
one typically glossed over in marketing communications that more
often than not blind side decision makers; especially those that
are extremely technically challenged. Note, when I say
"technically challenged" I am not referring to programming skills.
I am referring to basic understanding of technology as it applies
to a given domain e.g. the enterprise.
Back to the W3C and "The Semantic Web Project". In this case, the
big issue is that degree of unobtrusive delivery hasn't been a
leading factor -- bar SPARQL where its deliberate SQL proximity is
all about unobtrusive implementation and adoption. Ditto R2RML .
RDF is an example of a poorly orchestrated revolution at the
syntax level that is implicitly obtrusive at adoption and
implementation time. It is in this context I agree fully with you.
There was a misconception that RDF would be adopted like HTML,
just like that. As we can all see today, that never happened and
will never happened via revolution.
What can happen, unobtrusively, is the use and appreciation of
solutions that generate Linked Data (expressed using a variety of
syntaxes and serialized in a variety of formats). That's why we've
invested so much time in both Linked Data Middleware and DBMS
technology for ingestion, indexing, querying, and serialization.
For the umpteenth time here are three real world problems
addressed effectively by Linked Data courtesy of AWWW
(Architecture of the World Wide Web):
1. Verifiable Identifiers -- as delivered via WebID (leveraging
Trust Logic and FOAF)
2. Access Control Lists -- an application of WebID and Web
Access Control Ontology
3. Heterogeneous Data Access and Integration -- basically taking
use beyond the limits of ODBC, JDBC etc..
Let's apply the items above to some contemporary solutions that
illuminate the costs of not addressing the above:
1. G+ -- the "real name" debacle is WebID 101 re. pseudonyms,
synonyms, and anonymity
2. Facebook -- all the privacy shortcomings boil down to not
understanding the power of InterWeb scale verifiable identifiers
and access control lists
3. Twitter -- inability to turn Tweets into structured
annotations that are basically nano-memes
4. Email, Comment, Pingback SPAM -- a result of not being able
to verify identifiers
5. Precision Find -- going beyond the imprecision of Search
Engines whereby subject attribute and properties are used to
contextually discover relevant things (explicitly or
serendipitously).
The problem isn't really a shortage of solutions, far from it.
For the sake of argument only, conceding these are viable
solutions, the question is:
Do they provide more benefit than they cost?
Yes. They do, unequivocally.
If that can't be answered favorably, in hard currency (or some
other continuum of value that appeals to particular investors),
no one is going to make the investment.
Economics 101.
This critical value only materializes via appropriate "context
lenses". For decision makers it is always via opportunity costs.
If someone else is eating you lunch by disrupting your market you
simply have to respond. Thus, on this side of the fence its better
to focus on eating lunch rather than warning about the possibility
of doing so, or outlining how it could be done. Just do it!
That isn't specific to SemWeb but any solution to a problem.
Yes!
The solution has to provide a favorable cost/benefit ratio or it
won't be adopted. Or at least not widely.
Hope you are having a great day!
Patrick
--
Patrick Durusau
[email protected]
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net
Homepage: http://www.durusau.net
Twitter: patrickDurusau
