On 1/5/13 6:45 PM, Giovanni Tummarello wrote:
Hi Davidyou're describing the plain concept of "Open Data". SURE there are great datasets our tere.Open Data is already a sucess,it's good and great and will save lifes if it hasnt done so already (e.g. all this data now being made available) However this really has not to do with what i was referring to which is the failure at OUR specific task: coming up with specifications, models,clients whatever to technically make 'Open Data on the Web" as revolutionary as WWW was - the true killer app of hypertext the "it all makes sense now".
Hypertext links exposed the power of the Web. Hyperdata links take things to the next level.
Ted Nelson envisaged Hyperdata, but (IMHO) didn't really have the architectural clarity to guide it to reality, as TimBL has.
So with respect to this we failed, so far, OUR task.
As I'll repeat to you a zillion times, that's a subjective inaccuracy.
Give up? no in my opinion. just lets recognize that asking people to publish data alone makes no sense and actually its counterproductive and damaging given the specifications we're asking people to follow are silly as they dont serve any real purpose.
Where people asked to publish HTML pages? Ditto RSS based blogs? In my experience, the answer is an emphatic no. The opportunity cost of not doing either became palpable and that always triggers a market place tornado.
The only issue with Hyperdata (aka. Linked Data) is that opportunity costs are still heading towards the point of palpability for end-users and developers alike. The critical pain points are still coming together.
The pain points I refer to above are as follows, one more time: 1. verifiable identity2. access and integration of disparately shaped data from a variety of data sources
3. data access policies and access control lists 4. privacy5. dissemination of data to the right people, places, agents etc.. without compromising privacy or security.
1-5 are coming together at frenetic speed.
Something else is needed. E.g. starting point: what makes the web of data fundamentally different fromthe Web?
Nothing, both are driven by Hyperlinks. Of course, you have different kinds of hyperlinks i.e., hypertext and hyperdata.
Hypertext has been used to demonstrate the power of Webby structured content with information access and dissemination in mind i.e., the Web's information space dimension. Now we have Webb structured data as the mechanism for unveiling another dimension of the Web i.e., the Data Space (or DataSpace).
BTW -- the killer application of the Web is the Hyperlink. That will remain so forever. Over time it will simply be used expose many more dimensions of Web exploitation.
On the web it is indeed often sufficient to create a web site even a crappy one and you get immediate benefits. Given there are benefits people do it, period. IMO a client is missing. or a set of clients, that will do useful things for non fictional - important enough share of people.
No, we already have clients and consumers such as: Web browsers, legacy desktop applications, new mobile applications, and existing services that can all tap in to the data representation, access, integration, and dissemination frontiers that constitute the Web's data space dimension.
Do you know of any serious application or service that exists today that's incapable of making a basic HTTP GET?
With said clients (giving benefits already when accessing a few marked up websites, e.g. something that allows you to use rottentomatoes.com much better because of the markup that's ALREADY on it) then it willbe PEOPLE writing to webmasters saying "mark it up please otherwise i cant XY"or webmasters themselves wanting to mark up because then people with clients willbe able to XY.
Hyperlinks are powerful names for accessing Knowledge, Information, and Data. It just so happened that Web revelation happened via the information space, and now we have to backtrack to the data space en route to the knowledge space (where smart agents will thrive) dimension :-)
By every measure I know, Linked Data, LOD etc.. are resounding successes. Kingsley
Gio On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 11:44 PM, David Booth <[email protected]> wrote:I don't agree that the idea of "publish some stuff and they will come, both new publishers and consumers" has failed. But I do think some expectations have been too high. Perhaps it is like a scale-free distribution. Sure, there is lots of data that is published and ignored, just as there are millions of personal blog sites on the web that are ignored. But there is also some data that is published and is very valuable to Real Applications, just as sites like http://www.nytimes.com/ are valuable to many readers. Biological / life sciences data comes to mind. It is not always 5-star -- often 4-star or only 3-star: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html One would be foolish to think that one's personal blog would be useful to many others just because it is published on the web. Similarly one would be foolish to think that one's data would be useful to others merely because it is published as Linked Data. But blogs and datasets need to be published before consumers can decide which of them are valuable, so I think it's good to keep encouraging data publication. David On Fri, 2013-01-04 at 21:18 +0000, Hugh Glaser wrote:Wow Giovanni. I wrote the following this afternoon, and have been sitting trying to work out whether I should send it. I think it means you are not alone in your views!: I'm going to sound like a broken record here. All well and good, yes it would be great to have the Dogfood server working properly. But (to push the analogy further), is there any point in making DogFood if there are no dogs eating it? Is this really what all these clever people should be spending their time on? I knew Dogfood wasn't in a very good state because I get error reports when my system accesses it. But did anyone else notice? I'm so sad (yes really!) that after all these years people still run around getting excited about publishing data, and fiddling with little things, and yet it seems there is hardly a system that does any significant consumption (of any third party data). Best Hugh On 4 Jan 2013, at 21:02, Giovanni Tummarello <[email protected]> wrote:One might just simply stay silent and move along, but i take a few seconds to restate the obvious. It is a fact that Linked data as " publish some stuff and they will come, both new publishers and consumers" has failed. The idea of putting some "extra energy" would simply be useless per se BUT it becomes wrong when one tries to involve others e.g. gullible newcomers, fresh ph.d students who trust that "hey if my ph.d advisor made a career out of it, and EU gave him so much money it must be real right?" IAs community of people who claim to have something to do with research (and not a cult) every once in a while is learn from the above lesson and devise NEW methods and strategies. In other words, move ahead in a smart way. I am by no mean trowing all away. * publishing structured data on the web is already a *huge thing* with schema.org and the rest. Why? because of the clear incentive SEO. * RDF is a great model for heterogeneous data integration and i think it will explode in (certain) enterprises (knowledge intensive) What we're seeking here is more advanced, flexible uses of structured data published, e.g. by smart clients, that do useful things for people. The key is to show these clients, these useful things. What other (realistic) incentive can we create that make people publish data? how would a real "linked data client" work and provide benefit to a real world, non academic example class of users (if not all?) . my wish for 2013 about linked data is that the discussion focuses on this. With people concentrated on the "full circle, round trip" experience, with incentives for all (and how to start the virtuous circle). Gio On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 2:03 PM, William Waites <[email protected]> wrote:hmmm.... not so tasty: warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in /var/www/drupal-6.22/sites/all/modules/dogfood/dogfood.module on line 1807. digging deeper: The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. The proxy server could not handle the request POST /sparql. Reason: DNS lookup failure for: data.semanticweb.org Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2 PHP/5.2.0-8+etch16 mod_ssl/2.2.3 OpenSSL/0.9.8c Server at data.semanticweb.org Port 80 (appears to be a reverse proxy at data.semanticweb.org) I think I prefer people food... Cheers, -w-- David Booth, Ph.D. http://dbooth.org/ Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.
-- Regards, Kingsley Idehen Founder & CEO OpenLink Software Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen
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