Quite shocking title - isn't it?
First — a word of explanation: I used to write here reviews of books that I read. But I'm also a businessman and, still, a scientist... Recently mostly computer scientists doing my mostly private research in Computer Sciences.
And on my trip to nearby Warsaw, for our conference for investors and media, I woke up in a hotel and suddenly an idea came to my mind that shakes the common understanding or interpretation of what Semantic Web is about. This was quite troublesome at that morning, as my conference had the title „Semantic Web for business”.
Traditionally, people in the field speak about „Machine Understanding” (like in the Wikipedia Semantic Web definition: „The Semantic Web, as originally envisioned, is a system that enables machines to "understand" ....). When machines are about to "understand" we come close to all these AI tales and predictions about machine intelligence and machine consciousness ...
It suddenly came to me, that, we, who care about Semantic Web, make a great harm to this fantastic field just by purporting that it will enable machines to understand.
Even if we put aside the dispute what exactly is this "understanding", it is clear that with all great achievements, we are very very far from the intelligent machines, AI, machine understanding etc. I know I will anger AI proponents, but there is quite common conviction that we are very far from any "understanding" on part of machines.
Semantic Web does not enable MACHINES to understand — it enables US, HUMANS to cope with vast sea of information (and the ground of data) and, in turn, TO UNDERSTAND the meaning of the data on the Web (and soon — everywhere). It does so by providing tools and techniques and specific frames and paradigms that enable PEOPLE to extract and UNDERSTAND, the MEANING of the information on the Web.
I know that this is nothing more but an interpretation and only a bit different point of view. I know, that when Tim Berners Lee spoke about "understanding" he used it in somehow metaphorical way. But I also know that many people today started to use this "understanding" in more literal sense, and that makes a big confusion in human minds, causing harm to this fantastic area of Computer Science...
So I will start making difference. Semantic Web is not for machines to understand, is for us to comprehend the meaning of the vast sea of information that form today's Web.
Written in Warsaw, 7.49, December 8, 2011
Showing posts with label semantic web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label semantic web. Show all posts
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Opening addres for "Web has a meaning" conference
This my speech I gave at the opening of "Web has a meaning" conference organized at MakoLab XX anniversary on September 28, 2009 in Artur Rubinstein Lodz Philharmonic Hall:
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the “Web has a meaning” conference organized for the occasion of the 20th anniversary of MakoLab’s creation.
Traditionally, on such days and on such occasions, the most important facts from the 20 years of our history should be noted. However, this evening I would not like to emphasize only the company’s history, or especially facts. History is not a consequence of events of a single flat thread seen like a film – it is rather a network of interwoven threads and planes. We live on many of such planes simultaneously.
For the last 20 years, the people related to MakoLab have lived on at least three historical levels important to us: on the level of the history of Poland and Europe, on the level of the history of a growing company and, what is so significant to understand the reason of this conference – on the level of the history of the WEB. On these three planes – on a junction of social, economical and technological influences – our company was born.
The last twenty years is a period of Poland resurrecting and slowly liberating from the communist regime. The fact that we celebrate our anniversary precisely 20 years from that fateful year of 1989 has a particular meaning for us.
When in the summer of 1989, soon after the first free election in Poland, I for the first time went to West Berlin for the first computer for the then being created company – the Berlin Wall was yet there. After a few months of this critical year, on 9th November, the Berlin Wall symbolically collapsed. For us, the June elections opened a path to freedom, for the world – the collapse of the Berlin Wall was a symbolical date of the beginning of globalization and the birth of a new economy.
In everyday life of these years not always could we feel the winds of history – hard work and beginning a new life consumed our time completely. It wasn’t an easy period, the conditions of managing economical activity in the beginnings of our freedom were not what we expected. Today they are a bit better… A bit :-)
However, I would like to emphasize the other difficulty of the beginnings of the 3rd Polish Republic ("Rzeczpospolita") and of our company... For this purpose, I will use the famous sentence by Ryszard Kapuściński:
I cite this fragment not without a reason – every careful and thorough observer of the 20 years of Polish freedom may have probably noticed how many of the problems – both political and economical – sprung not from external conditions, but from our mentality, from unsuccessful overcoming of the demons from the past.
We also know it well that if we, as Łódź and Poland, achieve success today, even as humble as this one, that thanks to our hard work, the global financial crisis reached us with a delay and with less dangerous repercussions – that all of this is an effect of liberating ourselves from the remains of the old thinking, an effect of creativity and resourcefulness, the genes of which are completely different…
In everyday life I do not like lofty sentences, but on a day like this one I must share with you a reflection – I believe that one of the most important factors of success, both the success of Poland in Europe, of Łódź in Poland and of MakoLab in Łódź, Poland and Europe – is the obstinate yet humble ability to overcome our own limitations, our own minuteness, imperfections and disadvantages. All good and important events – and here I will mention only the two of them – our strong stock market debut in 2007 and handing the company’s management to Wojtek Zieliński in 2008 – are actually of this background. A closer look at the negative events, as they also did happen, reveals the ingredient of our minuteness, weakness and limitations – which could not always be defeated.
I have earlier said that we have lived on three surfaces: of the recovering freedom and of the growing company. The third surface is the Web and its history. I would obviously lie if I said that already in 1989 we had a vision of a company focused on the Web as we have it today. We were close to it, but we began to treat it seriously around 1995.
It is the Web and an attempt to answer the questions about its meaning for modern business, along with our anniversary, that is the main reason for organizing the today’s conference. Therefore, allow me to say something about the history of the Web in this part of my speech.
A small explanation to begin with – the Web, meaning a global network of interconnected WWW servers - is not identical with the Internet. Its laws cannot be reduced to the laws of the Internet itself, although without the Internet, it could not exist. Both in the technical and philosophical respect, Web is a higher layer – a higher level of the network.
The Internet was created in late 1950s, first as a military project, and then, in 1970s, as an academic project. The Web was born in the year seminal for us as well – 1989. It was in March of this year that Tim Berners Lee writes his famous work – “Information Management: A proposal”, in which he presents the fundamental ideas of the Web: basic laws of technical protocols and document format and the most significant idea of the Web – the idea of hypertext, defined as a “set of information readable for a human, connected in a way not restricted by anything”..
In 1990 launches the info.cern.ch server, which operates until today, the first Web browser “Enquire” is also created. A new era begins. Once again I emphasize that these are the same years in which we entered the difficult path toward freedom and the world, after the symbolical downfall of the Berlin Wall, began to learn globalization. The creation of the Web, known as well as the World Wide Web, had a revolutionary significance for both the Internet and the public space of the entire world. The numbers prove this: in 1989 the number of all computers in the Internet was 100 thousand, while in 1992 - already over a million. How is it possible?
What factor determined that it was WWW and not Gopher, FTP or e-mail that began the real explosion?
This factor is undoubtedly the fundamental SIMPLICITY of the WEB. WWW is based on essentially simple, natural and obvious principles.
These principles can be enumerated on a single breath – the principle of universal, public and unique address of each document in the network, the principle of hypertext – meaning the unlimited ability to link one document with the other, and the principle of transferring absolutely ANY data in a uniform and simple way. These three principles, creating the three fundamental protocols governing the Web (URL, HTML, HTTP) are so strikingly simple that to this day many people wonder how it is possible to create such richness on basis of a few simple standards.
However, it turns out that this simplicity – a kind of self-limitation of complicated technology to the simplest solutions – is exactly the factor that gave the Web such an incredible initial speed and literally unlimited growth. Not all of us know that HTML is a very primitive, willingly limited form of the then already existing SGML standard, and HTTP is almost a trivial toy in comparison to some already existing network protocols. I will not even mention the many drawbacks of the Web, which are best expressed by Tim Berners-Lee: “The Web will always be a little bit broken”. Yet in this limitation of power and the lack of perfection – lies strength. “The Principle of Least Power” is one of the most important axioms of the Web. I often repeat this rule, as a mantra, to all of our employees…
Let’s return to history: In 1994 the Netscape company is born and creates the first application known as a “killer application” – the Netscape web browser. In 1996 Netscape is followed by Microsoft with its Internet Explorer and the pretty inglorious history of browser wars begins. Fortunately, this does not disturb the emergence of the new economy around the Internet. In the same year, 1996, Amazon and eBay launch. In December 1998, Internet sale in the USA reaches heights unheard of in normal economy – the period from the Thanksgiving to Christmas of that year, due to the turnovers reaching 1,2 billion of US dollars would later be called “The Big Online Holiday Extravaganza”. Successes of the New Economy were so enthralling, that they blinded many – investors and businessmen alike. Unverified and incorrect plans eventually cause a typical and well-known global process known as the “bubble economy”. In 2000 and 2001 we observe a number of spectacular bankruptcies, stock market downfalls – which proved to many that it is not that easy. Looking for solid basis for Internet business will yet take a few years….
From the perspective of 20 years, this first period of the Web’s development, regardless of the multitude of solutions, is today called WEB 1.0 – the characteristic trait of this period is the centralized model of communication – the WEB servers the content of which was created by the creators and administrator – or webmaster – were used, typically in a passive way, by the users, or surfers.
In the beginning of the 21st century, there emerges a phenomenon subsequently called Web 2.0. It is worth mentioning here that Web 2.0 did not spring from any fundamental technological revolution. The technical basis of Web 2.0 is composed according to the same, simple rules I mentioned before. It was a social revolution or, if it may be said so, a mental revolution, and, what is most important – a cultural one. It progressed in four essentially independent ways:
Web 2.0 revolutionized the concept of knowledge and authority. Until today there is a discussion if Wikipedia, which is the largest known emanation of encyclopedic knowledge is trustworthy. Most probably not in all of its articles. But its unique social method of discourse, closely reminiscent of dialogues, commentaries and reflections on legislative or religious laws known from many ancient cultures, and being the contrary to the idea of a single proper authority – together with its strictly protected principle of neutrality – caused the creation of a body of human knowledge without precedent in the entire history of human culture. The Wikipedia of today is more than 10 million articles in almost all significant languages of the world…
Web 2.0 has such a strong influence on society that a well-known and renowned advisory company Forrester, called the explosion of Web 2.0 social sites a groundswell – which disturbs as if “from the bottom” the basics of traditional business, marketing, market communication, teamwork…
More and more companies and institutions understand that they must resign from bombastic rhetoric and pompous language of traditional marketing – they must listen to the authentic dialogues taking place on blogs, social networking websites, link sharing portals, forums and other platforms of communication witch swarm the Web of today.
When we take a closer look at the Web of today, the phenomenon known as Web 2.0, it is impossible to overlook that this was the primary vision of the Web.
Tim Berners Lee wrote:
It is amazing that this social effect, the openness to society – was achieved only after more than 10 years of the Web’s existence… It is worth remembering. Revolutions do not happen instantly – also in this context Kapuściński’s sentence I cited before is extremely relevant:
Today, in 2009, 20 years after its beginning, the Web is on a crossroads. It is unknown in which direction will its development follow. However, we know that Web 2.0 in its present shape, although it will continue defining the Web for the next few years – has tremendous limitations.
One may risk making a statement that the formula of Web 2.0 is slowly expiring – and it is difficult not to observe it. Let’s see – searching in Google and other popular search engines is still trivial and primitive – we look for pages using words, phrases and fragments of text – but not using terms and concepts. We have our accounts and our friends on e.g. Facebook or Nasza Klasa but we cannot transfer anything with all our friends to a different portal – without tedious entering of the same data. Our digital identity, our relations with people are taken over by companies – the operators of these pages – Facebook, Google, Nasza Klasa. But my digital identity and my relations with friends are MINE and I should be the one in control of them…
Wikipedia has over 10 million articles today, but we cannot easily extract structural data of, for instance, a simple table with numbers of citizens described in it – without tedious “copy/paste”…
I often give other trivial examples – let’s assume that in Excel we want to obtain a table with post addresses of a million companies that have Internet pages in Poland. We know these pages – every single one of them can be accessed - but unless we employ dozens of employees, this task is almost impossible…
Another example: let’s imagine asking Google such a question: give me addresses of all piano tuners no further than 5 kilometers away from the Łódź Philharmonic who work between 5 pm and 8 pm. No chances for a good answer. I emphasize the fact – this data is present on the Web, but we don’t have instruments and ideas for representing and obtaining it semantically.
Today we theoretically do know that these problems can be solved. We know that the solutions await in the new version of the Web, called by many Web 3.0, by others – the semantic web.
However, I’d like to call it differently. I’ve made my own term: “The Web full of meaning”.
I am aware that this sounds a bit like a fantasy – are we able to express meaning in computer technology, in files and databases? Meaning – that is a domain of the human mind and language? Doesn’t it sound like another prophecy of artificial intelligence? Doesn’t the term “ontology” widely used by the adepts of the “Semantic Web” lead us astray, toward some strange philosophy or bad metaphysics?
None of the above is the case. Meaning in the “Web full of meaning” is, for instance, such a method of recording a company’s address, that it may be found in an accurate way and regardless of the form of such input, regardless of language, style of writing or direction – from left to right, right to left or top to bottom.
Technology for recording objective meanings in the Web does exist. What is interesting, its foundations have been set by the already mentioned creator of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee. As everything in the Web, the technology is remarkably simple. It is based on a certain method of recording the simplest logical sentences that describe the reality as we know it – indicative sentences, hence on using subject, predicate and object. With these elementary sentences the semantic web builds more complex meanings.
To those of you who are interested in the subject – I recommend visiting our website (There is a Semantic Web zone in Polish lanuage section).
What is interesting, in academic circles the semantic web has been discussed for several years now. Many projects, including first commercial ones, are already on the market. But, as before, the revolution takes place slowly. It is now clear that what we are dealing with again is not a technological barrier, but rather a social, or in fact, a mental one. If we could encourage all webmasters of the world to use at least a tiny bit of semantic technologies – Web 3.0 would explode in a way that Web 1.0 or, recently, Web 2.0 did. How do we do that? We all await that proper, accurate idea…
Maybe it emerges here – in Poland, maybe in Łódź…
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, with this hope I will end my deliberations. I do not know if this will be us who prompt a breakthrough in the Web. However, I would like to assure, and I can do that with full certainty, that as when the Internet in Poland was starting to become significant, as today, when it is so important – MakoLab will always at least carefully observe its development and will at least be able to help its clients in explorations of the Internet’s new areas – areas of business, culture and technology.
Thank you for your attention.
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the “Web has a meaning” conference organized for the occasion of the 20th anniversary of MakoLab’s creation.
Traditionally, on such days and on such occasions, the most important facts from the 20 years of our history should be noted. However, this evening I would not like to emphasize only the company’s history, or especially facts. History is not a consequence of events of a single flat thread seen like a film – it is rather a network of interwoven threads and planes. We live on many of such planes simultaneously.
For the last 20 years, the people related to MakoLab have lived on at least three historical levels important to us: on the level of the history of Poland and Europe, on the level of the history of a growing company and, what is so significant to understand the reason of this conference – on the level of the history of the WEB. On these three planes – on a junction of social, economical and technological influences – our company was born.
The last twenty years is a period of Poland resurrecting and slowly liberating from the communist regime. The fact that we celebrate our anniversary precisely 20 years from that fateful year of 1989 has a particular meaning for us.
When in the summer of 1989, soon after the first free election in Poland, I for the first time went to West Berlin for the first computer for the then being created company – the Berlin Wall was yet there. After a few months of this critical year, on 9th November, the Berlin Wall symbolically collapsed. For us, the June elections opened a path to freedom, for the world – the collapse of the Berlin Wall was a symbolical date of the beginning of globalization and the birth of a new economy.
In everyday life of these years not always could we feel the winds of history – hard work and beginning a new life consumed our time completely. It wasn’t an easy period, the conditions of managing economical activity in the beginnings of our freedom were not what we expected. Today they are a bit better… A bit :-)
However, I would like to emphasize the other difficulty of the beginnings of the 3rd Polish Republic ("Rzeczpospolita") and of our company... For this purpose, I will use the famous sentence by Ryszard Kapuściński:
Although a system may cease
to exist in the legal sense or
as a structure of power,
its values (or anti-values),
its philosophy, its
teachings remain in us.
They rule our thinking, our conduct,
our attitude to others.
The situation is a demonic paradox:
we have toppled the system
but we still carry its genes
I cite this fragment not without a reason – every careful and thorough observer of the 20 years of Polish freedom may have probably noticed how many of the problems – both political and economical – sprung not from external conditions, but from our mentality, from unsuccessful overcoming of the demons from the past.
We also know it well that if we, as Łódź and Poland, achieve success today, even as humble as this one, that thanks to our hard work, the global financial crisis reached us with a delay and with less dangerous repercussions – that all of this is an effect of liberating ourselves from the remains of the old thinking, an effect of creativity and resourcefulness, the genes of which are completely different…
In everyday life I do not like lofty sentences, but on a day like this one I must share with you a reflection – I believe that one of the most important factors of success, both the success of Poland in Europe, of Łódź in Poland and of MakoLab in Łódź, Poland and Europe – is the obstinate yet humble ability to overcome our own limitations, our own minuteness, imperfections and disadvantages. All good and important events – and here I will mention only the two of them – our strong stock market debut in 2007 and handing the company’s management to Wojtek Zieliński in 2008 – are actually of this background. A closer look at the negative events, as they also did happen, reveals the ingredient of our minuteness, weakness and limitations – which could not always be defeated.
I have earlier said that we have lived on three surfaces: of the recovering freedom and of the growing company. The third surface is the Web and its history. I would obviously lie if I said that already in 1989 we had a vision of a company focused on the Web as we have it today. We were close to it, but we began to treat it seriously around 1995.
It is the Web and an attempt to answer the questions about its meaning for modern business, along with our anniversary, that is the main reason for organizing the today’s conference. Therefore, allow me to say something about the history of the Web in this part of my speech.
A small explanation to begin with – the Web, meaning a global network of interconnected WWW servers - is not identical with the Internet. Its laws cannot be reduced to the laws of the Internet itself, although without the Internet, it could not exist. Both in the technical and philosophical respect, Web is a higher layer – a higher level of the network.
The Internet was created in late 1950s, first as a military project, and then, in 1970s, as an academic project. The Web was born in the year seminal for us as well – 1989. It was in March of this year that Tim Berners Lee writes his famous work – “Information Management: A proposal”, in which he presents the fundamental ideas of the Web: basic laws of technical protocols and document format and the most significant idea of the Web – the idea of hypertext, defined as a “set of information readable for a human, connected in a way not restricted by anything”..
In 1990 launches the info.cern.ch server, which operates until today, the first Web browser “Enquire” is also created. A new era begins. Once again I emphasize that these are the same years in which we entered the difficult path toward freedom and the world, after the symbolical downfall of the Berlin Wall, began to learn globalization. The creation of the Web, known as well as the World Wide Web, had a revolutionary significance for both the Internet and the public space of the entire world. The numbers prove this: in 1989 the number of all computers in the Internet was 100 thousand, while in 1992 - already over a million. How is it possible?
What factor determined that it was WWW and not Gopher, FTP or e-mail that began the real explosion?
This factor is undoubtedly the fundamental SIMPLICITY of the WEB. WWW is based on essentially simple, natural and obvious principles.
These principles can be enumerated on a single breath – the principle of universal, public and unique address of each document in the network, the principle of hypertext – meaning the unlimited ability to link one document with the other, and the principle of transferring absolutely ANY data in a uniform and simple way. These three principles, creating the three fundamental protocols governing the Web (URL, HTML, HTTP) are so strikingly simple that to this day many people wonder how it is possible to create such richness on basis of a few simple standards.
However, it turns out that this simplicity – a kind of self-limitation of complicated technology to the simplest solutions – is exactly the factor that gave the Web such an incredible initial speed and literally unlimited growth. Not all of us know that HTML is a very primitive, willingly limited form of the then already existing SGML standard, and HTTP is almost a trivial toy in comparison to some already existing network protocols. I will not even mention the many drawbacks of the Web, which are best expressed by Tim Berners-Lee: “The Web will always be a little bit broken”. Yet in this limitation of power and the lack of perfection – lies strength. “The Principle of Least Power” is one of the most important axioms of the Web. I often repeat this rule, as a mantra, to all of our employees…
Let’s return to history: In 1994 the Netscape company is born and creates the first application known as a “killer application” – the Netscape web browser. In 1996 Netscape is followed by Microsoft with its Internet Explorer and the pretty inglorious history of browser wars begins. Fortunately, this does not disturb the emergence of the new economy around the Internet. In the same year, 1996, Amazon and eBay launch. In December 1998, Internet sale in the USA reaches heights unheard of in normal economy – the period from the Thanksgiving to Christmas of that year, due to the turnovers reaching 1,2 billion of US dollars would later be called “The Big Online Holiday Extravaganza”. Successes of the New Economy were so enthralling, that they blinded many – investors and businessmen alike. Unverified and incorrect plans eventually cause a typical and well-known global process known as the “bubble economy”. In 2000 and 2001 we observe a number of spectacular bankruptcies, stock market downfalls – which proved to many that it is not that easy. Looking for solid basis for Internet business will yet take a few years….
From the perspective of 20 years, this first period of the Web’s development, regardless of the multitude of solutions, is today called WEB 1.0 – the characteristic trait of this period is the centralized model of communication – the WEB servers the content of which was created by the creators and administrator – or webmaster – were used, typically in a passive way, by the users, or surfers.
In the beginning of the 21st century, there emerges a phenomenon subsequently called Web 2.0. It is worth mentioning here that Web 2.0 did not spring from any fundamental technological revolution. The technical basis of Web 2.0 is composed according to the same, simple rules I mentioned before. It was a social revolution or, if it may be said so, a mental revolution, and, what is most important – a cultural one. It progressed in four essentially independent ways:
- Global searching of information – the icons of which were Yahoo and mostly Google.
- Social cooperation in creation of information – the embodiment of which were blogs and the phenomenon known as the blogosphere
- New rules of creating and sharing knowledge – embodied by Wikipedia
- Usage of the Web for making and sustaining human relationships – with icons such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and in Poland – Nasza Klasa.
Web 2.0 revolutionized the concept of knowledge and authority. Until today there is a discussion if Wikipedia, which is the largest known emanation of encyclopedic knowledge is trustworthy. Most probably not in all of its articles. But its unique social method of discourse, closely reminiscent of dialogues, commentaries and reflections on legislative or religious laws known from many ancient cultures, and being the contrary to the idea of a single proper authority – together with its strictly protected principle of neutrality – caused the creation of a body of human knowledge without precedent in the entire history of human culture. The Wikipedia of today is more than 10 million articles in almost all significant languages of the world…
Web 2.0 has such a strong influence on society that a well-known and renowned advisory company Forrester, called the explosion of Web 2.0 social sites a groundswell – which disturbs as if “from the bottom” the basics of traditional business, marketing, market communication, teamwork…
More and more companies and institutions understand that they must resign from bombastic rhetoric and pompous language of traditional marketing – they must listen to the authentic dialogues taking place on blogs, social networking websites, link sharing portals, forums and other platforms of communication witch swarm the Web of today.
When we take a closer look at the Web of today, the phenomenon known as Web 2.0, it is impossible to overlook that this was the primary vision of the Web.
Tim Berners Lee wrote:
'The Web is rather a social than technical work. I designed it for the
social effect – in order to help people cooperate – and not as a technical toy'.
It is amazing that this social effect, the openness to society – was achieved only after more than 10 years of the Web’s existence… It is worth remembering. Revolutions do not happen instantly – also in this context Kapuściński’s sentence I cited before is extremely relevant:
“We have broken the system, but its genes are still within us …”
Today, in 2009, 20 years after its beginning, the Web is on a crossroads. It is unknown in which direction will its development follow. However, we know that Web 2.0 in its present shape, although it will continue defining the Web for the next few years – has tremendous limitations.
One may risk making a statement that the formula of Web 2.0 is slowly expiring – and it is difficult not to observe it. Let’s see – searching in Google and other popular search engines is still trivial and primitive – we look for pages using words, phrases and fragments of text – but not using terms and concepts. We have our accounts and our friends on e.g. Facebook or Nasza Klasa but we cannot transfer anything with all our friends to a different portal – without tedious entering of the same data. Our digital identity, our relations with people are taken over by companies – the operators of these pages – Facebook, Google, Nasza Klasa. But my digital identity and my relations with friends are MINE and I should be the one in control of them…
Wikipedia has over 10 million articles today, but we cannot easily extract structural data of, for instance, a simple table with numbers of citizens described in it – without tedious “copy/paste”…
I often give other trivial examples – let’s assume that in Excel we want to obtain a table with post addresses of a million companies that have Internet pages in Poland. We know these pages – every single one of them can be accessed - but unless we employ dozens of employees, this task is almost impossible…
Another example: let’s imagine asking Google such a question: give me addresses of all piano tuners no further than 5 kilometers away from the Łódź Philharmonic who work between 5 pm and 8 pm. No chances for a good answer. I emphasize the fact – this data is present on the Web, but we don’t have instruments and ideas for representing and obtaining it semantically.
Today we theoretically do know that these problems can be solved. We know that the solutions await in the new version of the Web, called by many Web 3.0, by others – the semantic web.
However, I’d like to call it differently. I’ve made my own term: “The Web full of meaning”.
I am aware that this sounds a bit like a fantasy – are we able to express meaning in computer technology, in files and databases? Meaning – that is a domain of the human mind and language? Doesn’t it sound like another prophecy of artificial intelligence? Doesn’t the term “ontology” widely used by the adepts of the “Semantic Web” lead us astray, toward some strange philosophy or bad metaphysics?
None of the above is the case. Meaning in the “Web full of meaning” is, for instance, such a method of recording a company’s address, that it may be found in an accurate way and regardless of the form of such input, regardless of language, style of writing or direction – from left to right, right to left or top to bottom.
Technology for recording objective meanings in the Web does exist. What is interesting, its foundations have been set by the already mentioned creator of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee. As everything in the Web, the technology is remarkably simple. It is based on a certain method of recording the simplest logical sentences that describe the reality as we know it – indicative sentences, hence on using subject, predicate and object. With these elementary sentences the semantic web builds more complex meanings.
To those of you who are interested in the subject – I recommend visiting our website (There is a Semantic Web zone in Polish lanuage section).
What is interesting, in academic circles the semantic web has been discussed for several years now. Many projects, including first commercial ones, are already on the market. But, as before, the revolution takes place slowly. It is now clear that what we are dealing with again is not a technological barrier, but rather a social, or in fact, a mental one. If we could encourage all webmasters of the world to use at least a tiny bit of semantic technologies – Web 3.0 would explode in a way that Web 1.0 or, recently, Web 2.0 did. How do we do that? We all await that proper, accurate idea…
Maybe it emerges here – in Poland, maybe in Łódź…
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, with this hope I will end my deliberations. I do not know if this will be us who prompt a breakthrough in the Web. However, I would like to assure, and I can do that with full certainty, that as when the Internet in Poland was starting to become significant, as today, when it is so important – MakoLab will always at least carefully observe its development and will at least be able to help its clients in explorations of the Internet’s new areas – areas of business, culture and technology.
We Web it for you … but first and foremost: We Web it with you !!!
Thank you for your attention.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Web has a meaning. Influence of the Web on business
This post is the short summary of the conference "Web has a meaning" we had in Lodz a week ago. We organized it to celebrate MakoLab XX years of existence, XX years of the Web and XX years of Freedom of our Motherland.
The summary is:
The conference was ended by the performance of Affabre Concinui.
Here are some pictures from the conference:
The summary is:
The “Web has a meaning” conference took place on 28th September 2009 in Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra, Łódź to commemorate the 20th anniversary of MakoLab. The subject of the meeting, which gathered nearly 300 participants, was the analysis of the influence of the Web on the development of business. Lecturers from Poland, Austria and France delivered speeches in which they, looking from different points of view, answered the question of how the internet changes modern business.
In the introduction of the conference, Vice-marshal of the county of Łódź, Mr. Witold Stępień and vice-president of Łódź, Mr. Włodzimierz Tomaszewski presented short speeches relating to the 20th anniversary of MakoLab and the subject matter of the meeting.
The conference was opened by President of Board of MakoLab SA, Mr. Wojciech Zieliński, and lead by Mr. Jacek Grudzień – a well-known journalist from Łódź who popularizes the topic of innovative enterprises operating in the region of Łódź.
In the introductory lecture, Vice-president of Board of MakoLab S.A., Dr. Mirosław Sopek, briefly described the history of the Web and focused on the critical moment in its history which is characterized, according to the speaker, by the slow expiry of the formula of Web 2.0 and by the anticipation of a new revolution. According to Sopek, it will consist of introducing semantic solutions, leading to the creation of “a Web full of meaning”.
Jean Philippe Mathes, representing Renault Scope and RCI Banque, presented a lecture of a meaningful title – “Why we fight”. Using references to the famous “Cluetrain Manifest”, he described how difficult the process of introduction of Web solutions in a large corporation was. Relating to the financial web services of RCI Banque, he demonstrated the significance of e-commerce in the auto industry.
Rainer Gangl, representing Austrian agency Gangl Consulting, presented an interesting technological and business model of publishing of advertisements on the Web that still manages to compete with Google ads. He also emphasized the potential social systems such as Facebook provide to business.
Rafał Brzoska, founder and co-owner of Integer.pl, InPost and InPost Finanse demonstrated the meaning of the Web for the traditional business of parcel delivery. The speaker stated that the key to success lies on the junction of network communication and traditional business that cannot be replaced by the web. An interesting part of Brzoska’s speech was the reflection on the threats springing from the universality of network systems.
Sławomir Lachowski – creator of mBank and former president of BRE Bank presented a lecture which emphasized the significance of development of the IT sector and the laws of Moore, Metcalf and Glider associated with it, which are required for proper understanding of the processes taking place in modern business. According to the speaker, the Internet markets realize the ideal model of capitalism as seen by Adam Smith, in which exists complete and unrestricted access to information, variety of buyers and sellers, there are no barriers of entry and the costs of transfers decreased to zero.
After the plenary lectures, a discussion panel with the lecturers took place, during which the image of the Web in the coming decade was discussed. As a conclusion of the interesting talk, Mr. Mirosław Sopek, PhD said that, although the development of technology may be approximately predicted, forecasts regarding its business and social impact and applications are impossible to be conducted.
In the subsequent point of the conference, Mr. Andrzej Walczak, co-founder and co-owner of the Atlas group, initiated a new Internet Project called www.superpolska.info. It will become a portal which, according to the initiator’s aim, will become a casual platform of Communication around places important for its users.
In the second part of the conference, President of Board of MakoLab S.A. Wojciech Zieliński and Michał Jaskólski, the leader of the jury, presented the results of the „Young Talent Contest”. „Visual Search” by Mr. Jacek Ciereszko won the competition, while „Funkee Search” by Mr. Michał Kujawski and Mr. Krzysztof Lewiński received a honorable distinction. The laureates of the contest were awarded with prizes.
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The conference was ended by the performance of Affabre Concinui.
Here are some pictures from the conference:
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Content - the nature of thought on the web
Cory Doctorow is a blogger, activist, journalist, sci-fi writer and a father of a daughter.
His book "Content" is a selection of several articles and talks Cory wrote or delivered over last couple of years. It is hard to tell, what is this book about, because it is about everything important for us - nerds of Internet, citizens of cyberspace!
Subtitle: "Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future" needs some explanation when it comes to "The Future of the Future". The part of Cory's book that is about Future of the Future, explores some Sci-Fi born ideas. Particularly, he explores the idea of singularity - the idea quite important from philosophical point of view - even though it has an aura of total fantasy today...
In other parts it is about the very concept of information, intellectual ownership and copyright in digital era. It contains my favorite text Cory ever wrote "Metacrap: Putting the Torch to Seven Straw-Men of the Meta-Utopia" (the original is here). The text is short but profound. By debunking the metadata hype (in essence - "explicit" metadata), he almost obliges all proponents of Semantic Web to rethink of thier basic tenants....
But it also covers the issues of eBooks and social platforms (with very profound critics of Facebook). He is also very critical of DRM, and his reasoning on this topic is just great and brave.
See for example what he dared to say to Microsoft guys....
There is also a citation of famous "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" the seminal text by John Perry Barlow, one of creators of Electronic Frontier Foundation.
All in All - the book is a must for all of us who care about what web means to us....
Needless to say, the book is free to download and free to listen to. Enjoy !
His book "Content" is a selection of several articles and talks Cory wrote or delivered over last couple of years. It is hard to tell, what is this book about, because it is about everything important for us - nerds of Internet, citizens of cyberspace!
Subtitle: "Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future" needs some explanation when it comes to "The Future of the Future". The part of Cory's book that is about Future of the Future, explores some Sci-Fi born ideas. Particularly, he explores the idea of singularity - the idea quite important from philosophical point of view - even though it has an aura of total fantasy today...
In other parts it is about the very concept of information, intellectual ownership and copyright in digital era. It contains my favorite text Cory ever wrote "Metacrap: Putting the Torch to Seven Straw-Men of the Meta-Utopia" (the original is here). The text is short but profound. By debunking the metadata hype (in essence - "explicit" metadata), he almost obliges all proponents of Semantic Web to rethink of thier basic tenants....
But it also covers the issues of eBooks and social platforms (with very profound critics of Facebook). He is also very critical of DRM, and his reasoning on this topic is just great and brave.
See for example what he dared to say to Microsoft guys....
There is also a citation of famous "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" the seminal text by John Perry Barlow, one of creators of Electronic Frontier Foundation.
All in All - the book is a must for all of us who care about what web means to us....
Needless to say, the book is free to download and free to listen to. Enjoy !
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Can we apply Kuhn's ideas to the WEB ???
I just finished reading Thomas Kuhn's famous "Structure of Scientific Revolutions". This book, today taken as classical text about the history of Science, is of amazing importance to understanding of the evolution of science.
Kuhn was the first who elucidated the concept of PARADIGM in a relation to science. Paradigm, which we should understand as a pattern of thought - rather than a theory or model, is the pervasive component of almost any human intellectual activity.
Kuhn proves that the evolution in science goes in a revolutionary way, by a process called "paradigm shift" which is usually abrupt and fast. One of the symptoms of the paradigm shift is the process of textbook rewriting - when the change appears to be unavoidable and untenable to the previous paradigm. Kuhn describes Copernican revolution, progress in chemistry, Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory or relativity as the key examples illustrating his concept.
Very good book - should not be too difficult to read even to those who did not practice science (as I did in old good days with theoretical chemistry ...).
I think, there is also another reason to read it. When reading it I could not avoid thinking about the another field of activity where we witness revolutions and paradigm shifts. See - the history of Web - the web grown to today's size, mostly between 1995 to 2000 - in just 6 years it has changed so much - media, knowledge ...
And, when we recall that the HTML was created in 1980, and HTTP in 1989 - we see that initially the old paradigm of communication was still prevailing. Until Netscape came with its killing application - the browser - and made the shift.
And I'm almost sure we are at the footsteps of another paradigm shift - that between today's web of documents and tomorrow's web of data (aka Semantic Web). Kuhn's book teaches us that it is not very easy to predict when will it happen, and that we probably will witness some dramatic changes. It also explains the latency with SW adoption. The technology is here for years, yet ... Paradigm has not yet shifted !!!
Kuhn was the first who elucidated the concept of PARADIGM in a relation to science. Paradigm, which we should understand as a pattern of thought - rather than a theory or model, is the pervasive component of almost any human intellectual activity.
Kuhn proves that the evolution in science goes in a revolutionary way, by a process called "paradigm shift" which is usually abrupt and fast. One of the symptoms of the paradigm shift is the process of textbook rewriting - when the change appears to be unavoidable and untenable to the previous paradigm. Kuhn describes Copernican revolution, progress in chemistry, Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory or relativity as the key examples illustrating his concept.
Very good book - should not be too difficult to read even to those who did not practice science (as I did in old good days with theoretical chemistry ...).
I think, there is also another reason to read it. When reading it I could not avoid thinking about the another field of activity where we witness revolutions and paradigm shifts. See - the history of Web - the web grown to today's size, mostly between 1995 to 2000 - in just 6 years it has changed so much - media, knowledge ...
And, when we recall that the HTML was created in 1980, and HTTP in 1989 - we see that initially the old paradigm of communication was still prevailing. Until Netscape came with its killing application - the browser - and made the shift.
And I'm almost sure we are at the footsteps of another paradigm shift - that between today's web of documents and tomorrow's web of data (aka Semantic Web). Kuhn's book teaches us that it is not very easy to predict when will it happen, and that we probably will witness some dramatic changes. It also explains the latency with SW adoption. The technology is here for years, yet ... Paradigm has not yet shifted !!!
Friday, July 03, 2009
Google's step into Semantic Web - genuine move or a dodge to avoid criticism?
About two months ago Google started to promote two Semantic Web techniques, RDFa and Microformats. We were delighted - finally, with Google doing so, we saw the efforts of all previous trailblazers coming to the fruition. We believed that the first, indeed small step Google did, would be a real leap into the direction of Web 3.0 or, as I used to call it, "Web full of Meaning". Maybe it is still to soon to see the fruits, but we should already see some buds. We don't.
After some reflection and a scrutiny applied to Google's "Rich Snippets" page, or "Structured Data Page" where they announced the support, one can really be disappointed. The simple, I would say - primitive ontology they used (their own data-vocabulary.org) is very strange for its mean scope of concepts. The decision to allow first only for semantic descriptions of reviews is strange and forces us to ask the question: What the heck they are doing?
It seems they did not notice the role of such respected yet also simple, ontologies like Dublin Core Metadata, or when it comes to people - Foaf....
Ian Davis in his post, calls it straight: Google’s RDFa a Damp Squib :-)
I support Ian fully. I try to be far from conspiracy theories, but the way Google steeped into the arena of SW, seems to be more to postpone its advance, than to promote it....
So disappointing ...
After some reflection and a scrutiny applied to Google's "Rich Snippets" page, or "Structured Data Page" where they announced the support, one can really be disappointed. The simple, I would say - primitive ontology they used (their own data-vocabulary.org) is very strange for its mean scope of concepts. The decision to allow first only for semantic descriptions of reviews is strange and forces us to ask the question: What the heck they are doing?
It seems they did not notice the role of such respected yet also simple, ontologies like Dublin Core Metadata, or when it comes to people - Foaf....
Ian Davis in his post, calls it straight: Google’s RDFa a Damp Squib :-)
I support Ian fully. I try to be far from conspiracy theories, but the way Google steeped into the arena of SW, seems to be more to postpone its advance, than to promote it....
So disappointing ...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Old wisdom never dies ...
See the amazing part of an amazing 2007 article: "Who is afraid of the GGG?" (here)
"making a landline phone call will now be ‘unSkyping’,
Post-It notes will henceforth be called ‘retro-Twitters’,
going outside will now be ‘outdoorsing’,
a paperback book will be known as a ‘Kindle Alpha’
and ....
Wednesdays will be Day 3.0. "
isn't it lovely and ... full of truth about our hubris to invent new pseudo-real-concepts ???
:-)
"making a landline phone call will now be ‘unSkyping’,
Post-It notes will henceforth be called ‘retro-Twitters’,
going outside will now be ‘outdoorsing’,
a paperback book will be known as a ‘Kindle Alpha’
and ....
Wednesdays will be Day 3.0. "
isn't it lovely and ... full of truth about our hubris to invent new pseudo-real-concepts ???
:-)
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Why the new title for my blog?
There are few reasons for going from "Reading Books" to "purl.org/net/sopek":
1) The blog is no longer only about books. There are a lot of of posts on various themes
2) I want to promote my global unique identifier "purl.org/net/sopek"
3) I want to promote the idea of global, persistent identifiers
What is this PURL than ?
It is an acronym for Persistent URL. PURL is a service, run by Online Computer Library Center, a non-profit international organization, committed to preserve created PURLs indefinitely and at no cost. There are about 800 thousands PURLs created so far. PURL never change. Once created they will exist as long as Internet will be up and running. On the technical side PURL is a resolution server. It means, that it can point to some real resource (For example purl.org/net/sopek points to this blog). Because of this nature PURLs are ideal as parts of URI for any semantic web need.
And last - but not least - I may decide to move to another blog platform. This means I may loose my sopekmir.blogspot.com address - but I will never loose purl.org/net/sopek !!!
1) The blog is no longer only about books. There are a lot of of posts on various themes
2) I want to promote my global unique identifier "purl.org/net/sopek"
3) I want to promote the idea of global, persistent identifiers
What is this PURL than ?
It is an acronym for Persistent URL. PURL is a service, run by Online Computer Library Center, a non-profit international organization, committed to preserve created PURLs indefinitely and at no cost. There are about 800 thousands PURLs created so far. PURL never change. Once created they will exist as long as Internet will be up and running. On the technical side PURL is a resolution server. It means, that it can point to some real resource (For example purl.org/net/sopek points to this blog). Because of this nature PURLs are ideal as parts of URI for any semantic web need.
And last - but not least - I may decide to move to another blog platform. This means I may loose my sopekmir.blogspot.com address - but I will never loose purl.org/net/sopek !!!
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Two applications of Wikipedia - one of Meaning, second of Printing
Wikipedia has two fantastic offspring ideas.
In the first we can see what size it would have if printed on paper. See http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/ (via David Weinberger). Have fun :-)
In the second, which I get into closer at last ESWC conference, called dbPedia, we have huge extraction of structured data or, structured data. I specifically like the term "Meaning Minining" coined by David Weinberger. Sings in my ears nigh to my "Web full of Meaning" as I call Semantic Web...
In the first we can see what size it would have if printed on paper. See http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/ (via David Weinberger). Have fun :-)
In the second, which I get into closer at last ESWC conference, called dbPedia, we have huge extraction of structured data or, structured data. I specifically like the term "Meaning Minining" coined by David Weinberger. Sings in my ears nigh to my "Web full of Meaning" as I call Semantic Web...
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Semantic Web on Greek Island. Conclusion
ESWC 2009 - European Semantic Web Conference.
It was great conference and amazing experience. Not only I could understand and grasp where the world is today when it comes to Semantic Web, but also we witnessed deep and hot discussion about its philosophical implications. After these 5 intensive days one can really feel the big change that will soon shake the web and the way we use it.
I think, instead of long review, I rather point readers to two web resources about the conference:
1) Its website: http://www.eswc2009.org/
2) The recordings of key lectures will be soon available on http://www.videolectures.net/
Finally, it was also right choice to organize it in such amazing nature...
See just two pictures:
It was great conference and amazing experience. Not only I could understand and grasp where the world is today when it comes to Semantic Web, but also we witnessed deep and hot discussion about its philosophical implications. After these 5 intensive days one can really feel the big change that will soon shake the web and the way we use it.
I think, instead of long review, I rather point readers to two web resources about the conference:
1) Its website: http://www.eswc2009.org/
2) The recordings of key lectures will be soon available on http://www.videolectures.net/
Finally, it was also right choice to organize it in such amazing nature...
See just two pictures:
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Today’s dummies – Tomorrow’s génies
„Making Everything Easier” is the well known motto of the „For Dummies” series of books. The series has a good track of bringing even the most difficult technologies and skills to the level of a layman. Looking into the past, we can track that in most cases soon after a book „X for Dummies” was published, X became really important.
So I was extremely happy to find “Semantic Web for Dummies” by Jeffrey T. Pollock (http://www.semanticwebfordummies.com/). First, Jeffrey T. Pollock is really a personage of the Semantic Web. Software industry veteran for many years, now with Oracle, where he is a true trailblazer for Semantic Web technologies at the most advanced database and business software vendor. Second - so far, Semantic Web was the domain of highly sophisticated academic discourses and abstract papers far from reality.
“Semantic Web for Dummies” breaks from this tradition and shows its very practical applications. For example in Chapters “The Semantic Web in Your Life” the author shows the importance of Semantic Web for social Web2.0 experience. As he goes through solutions like Twine, TripIt, ZoomInfo or Dapper – he demonstrates that, somehow unconsciously, we are already using it! Then he switches to business use cases and writes about semantic applications, databases, policies and shows how important it can be for data integration – the most critical of today’s business systems challanges.
The book has nice parts like “A Quick Semantic Web Primer” or “Using the Resource Description Framework” aimed at teaching RDF, and “Speaking the Web Ontology Language” – aimed at OWL. In “Exploring Semantic Web Enablers” Pollock goes through all important components of Semantic Web. I was, however, a bit disappointed that the sub-chapter about SPARQL – such important part of SW was only 1,5 page long – certainly too short !!!
The best parts of the book are part IV “Putting the Semantic Web to Work” and V “The Parts of Tens”. The former for its practical attitude and lots of existing examples (e.g. I was amazed by “Harpers Magazine” experience), the later is quite philosophical, nevertheless it defends SW using the same “Ten Myths” method – once used by emerging XML technology.
By rebuking these myths Pollock truly answers all important doubts and hesitations about Semantic Web technologies.
The book concludes by a series of very practical suggestions – “Ten Next Steps” – where the reader gets practical advises what to check, train or contact, if she/he wants to participate in the growing tide of Semantic Webs :-)
I strongly recommend the book – it is the best introduction into Semantic Web I found on the market, so far.
So I was extremely happy to find “Semantic Web for Dummies” by Jeffrey T. Pollock (http://www.semanticwebfordummies.com/). First, Jeffrey T. Pollock is really a personage of the Semantic Web. Software industry veteran for many years, now with Oracle, where he is a true trailblazer for Semantic Web technologies at the most advanced database and business software vendor. Second - so far, Semantic Web was the domain of highly sophisticated academic discourses and abstract papers far from reality.
“Semantic Web for Dummies” breaks from this tradition and shows its very practical applications. For example in Chapters “The Semantic Web in Your Life” the author shows the importance of Semantic Web for social Web2.0 experience. As he goes through solutions like Twine, TripIt, ZoomInfo or Dapper – he demonstrates that, somehow unconsciously, we are already using it! Then he switches to business use cases and writes about semantic applications, databases, policies and shows how important it can be for data integration – the most critical of today’s business systems challanges.
The book has nice parts like “A Quick Semantic Web Primer” or “Using the Resource Description Framework” aimed at teaching RDF, and “Speaking the Web Ontology Language” – aimed at OWL. In “Exploring Semantic Web Enablers” Pollock goes through all important components of Semantic Web. I was, however, a bit disappointed that the sub-chapter about SPARQL – such important part of SW was only 1,5 page long – certainly too short !!!
The best parts of the book are part IV “Putting the Semantic Web to Work” and V “The Parts of Tens”. The former for its practical attitude and lots of existing examples (e.g. I was amazed by “Harpers Magazine” experience), the later is quite philosophical, nevertheless it defends SW using the same “Ten Myths” method – once used by emerging XML technology.
By rebuking these myths Pollock truly answers all important doubts and hesitations about Semantic Web technologies.
The book concludes by a series of very practical suggestions – “Ten Next Steps” – where the reader gets practical advises what to check, train or contact, if she/he wants to participate in the growing tide of Semantic Webs :-)
I strongly recommend the book – it is the best introduction into Semantic Web I found on the market, so far.
Post written on beautiful Crete:
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Semantic Web on Greek Island
I participate in the 6th European Semantic Web Conference. The conference is organized on the Crete Island - one of the cradles of ancient Greek civilizations of Minoan, and later - Hellenistic civilization.
To organize the conference about the emerging "ecosystem" of Semantic Web in the place of the emergence of civilization - is a spectacular idea on its own.
I will write more during or after the conference. The first day was full of workshops and tutorials.
I participated in an excellent tutorial presented by Matin Hepp and Michael Hausenblas.
It was about application of Semantic Web ideas for e-commerce, and in particular about GoodRelations ontology. What has impressed me - was how much work and real achievement is already in place.
During this tutorial we also learned about Yahoo's SearchMonkey and latest Google announcement that it will use RDFa and Microformats - I believe these events will enable the real jump start of Semantic Web ...
To be continued ....
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Wolfram Alpha - success or misfire ?
Wolfram Research has just launched its long awaited project: Wolfram Alfa.
My impression of it is however that of mixed feelings.I found some simple queries working well, but some other totally wrong - with no indication why.
I tried some chemistry on it (having PhD in theoretical chemistry I could:-) ).
Simple molecules expressed via simple query like C2H5OH are superb, including nice 3D models (try), but when you take something more complicated but perfectly well known (like La2(CO3)3) it shows something that has almost nothing of any knowledge of value.
Moreover, when I typed an absurd formula H9O – the answer was unnoticeably similar to some other perfectly sound molecules !!!
I tried some concepts form neuroscience – I always got simple: “WolframAlpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”
And what bothers me the most: that mysterious source reference: “WolframAlpha curated Data 2009” – with no real explanation what it is, how it was build etc…
As for the only real value I got from WolframAlpha - it did some funny deciphering of my first name: Mirek. Try it – it’s fun and you will understand my "aka" signature below :-)
Well, that was a joke – there are some areas in which it operates well. Almost all math formulas I entered were produced superb, nice plots, formulas etc. So, as Wolfram Mathematica web extension it is perfect. I’m not sure about other fields.
Perhaphs it is as David Winberger wrote: “WA is like roomful of idiot savants”
I hope it will improve. There is something in me, like a small voice, telling me: there is some huge value in Wolfram Alpha, though I still cannot see it clearly...
Mirek (aka 1K-1)
My impression of it is however that of mixed feelings.I found some simple queries working well, but some other totally wrong - with no indication why.
I tried some chemistry on it (having PhD in theoretical chemistry I could:-) ).
Simple molecules expressed via simple query like C2H5OH are superb, including nice 3D models (try), but when you take something more complicated but perfectly well known (like La2(CO3)3) it shows something that has almost nothing of any knowledge of value.
Moreover, when I typed an absurd formula H9O – the answer was unnoticeably similar to some other perfectly sound molecules !!!
I tried some concepts form neuroscience – I always got simple: “WolframAlpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”
And what bothers me the most: that mysterious source reference: “WolframAlpha curated Data 2009” – with no real explanation what it is, how it was build etc…
As for the only real value I got from WolframAlpha - it did some funny deciphering of my first name: Mirek. Try it – it’s fun and you will understand my "aka" signature below :-)
Well, that was a joke – there are some areas in which it operates well. Almost all math formulas I entered were produced superb, nice plots, formulas etc. So, as Wolfram Mathematica web extension it is perfect. I’m not sure about other fields.
Perhaphs it is as David Winberger wrote: “WA is like roomful of idiot savants”
I hope it will improve. There is something in me, like a small voice, telling me: there is some huge value in Wolfram Alpha, though I still cannot see it clearly...
Mirek (aka 1K-1)
Monday, April 27, 2009
WWW: Wake - A Web Odyssey ...
Since "2001: A Space Odyssey" we no longer ignore science-fiction novels and movies, even if we are not in favor of such kind of literature. They usually question our common-sense philosophical paradigms. Of course, only if they have deeper meaning beyond the techno-babble of primitive scifi books. I do not need to recall books like Neuromances, authors like P. K. Dick or movies like Matrix. All of them bore some deeper philosophical questions.
Robert J. Stewart’s “WWW:Wake” inscribes itself into this stream of thought interwoven with scifi fable.
Stewart creates the trilogy about the Web. Wake is the part one of it. It is a trilogy of an intelligent consciousness rising in the web - out of its almost residual activity, related to lost signals and cellular automata-like activity of them.
The first part: WWW:Wake is really a good reading. In fact one almost does not feel any typical scifi climate. We follow the plot of young girl blind from her birth. At some moment in her life, a Japanese professor offers her his help – a promise to restore her sight. An implant is planted into her brain to correct her optic nerve transmission. However, instead of restoring her vision, at first it enables her to see ... the web.In fact, we need here to correct the author - she is able to see the Internet, not the WEB.What is more – the web architecture is not properly described through the visions of the character.This was the first tiny slip of the author – while he made a lot of effort to describe some concepts of the web correctly, at some places we can find many conceptual shortcomings.
However, these issues are minor – the author so brilliantly describes the learning process of the computer program, that is almost like a popular introduction to semantic web ontologies and their “use cases”:
"And and and yes, yes, yes it was staggering, thrilling, long long last, here it was,the key, this website, this increadible website, expressed concepts in a form I could nowunderstand, systematizing it all, relating thousands of things to each other in a coding system,that explained them. Term after term. connection after connection, idea after idea, this websitelaid them out, curious, interesting, an apple is a fruit, fruits contaib seeds, seeds can grom into es..."
The another positive side of the book is its references to important yet less known people and works, like"Cyc" and its author Douglas Lenat, "Mathematica" and Stephen Wolfram or Princeton's WordNet.
Finally – We will look forward to read the second part of the WWW trilogy – I hope it will reveal the true virtues of the author and his opus.
The post finished in Paris, France on May 1st, 2009.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Birth of new Web: Giant-Global-Graph or GGG
We probably witness the birth of the new Web. At least someone named it. From the dawn of civilization we know that TO NAME is very often equivalent of TO KNOW.
Moses, facing the burning bush, asks G-d about His name, in a conviction that he must pass His name to his fellows, even though they had known Him already. And when the name is uttered, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh — "I Will Be Who I Will Be" — there are no more questions that they have Infinite Power and Infinite Kindness behind them. The very notion of the name — the mystery hidden in it's letters — explained everything.
I try to avoid pompous air in my post — but I do have a feeling we have a birth of the new Web. And the name of it: GIANT-GLOBAL-GRAPH is much more appealing than "Semantic Web". In some sense I'm eager to drop my own-coined term "Web full of Meaning", though I like it very much and despite the fact it had a very cute, allegoric meaning in my mother's tongue: "Sieć pełna znaczeń".
But GGG concept is great because it can simply become this last click on the ratchet in the making of the new machinery of the web of data. Imagine, if we would adopt a habit of naming semantic information on our website as ggg.domain_name.suffix. For example, imagine that in addition to www.makolab.com, ggg.makolab.com would keep the entries to all semantically enabled data that could describe what are the resources at www.makolab.com and more. Anyone technical enough would immediately notice, that there is no mistery about domain names starting with "ggg", like there is nothing special about those starting with "www" — both humbly point to some resource. However, like www.makolab.com is for human visual perception, ggg.makolab.com would be for machines or softaware agents to discover what the site is all about.
Imagine that at ggg.sopekmir.blogspot.com you would find my FOAF definition, the RSS channels and all other semantic information related to my blog. And so on...
GGG was introduced in Tim-Berners-Lee blog post almost 1,5 years ago, but it didn't rise enough attention yet. There are few interesting blog posts here and there. See this as an example and very interesting another one. The fact that Wikipedia article is so short is also discouriging.
Maybe, because of the context - GGG was about Social Networks
But, as Tim wrote: "We can use the word Graph, now, to distinguish from Web." and for good - the Web is a web of documents, the Graph is a web of data, linked and full of meaning.
For both machines and us, mere mortals....
If you are new to the field, read good Wikipedia article about Semantic Web.
For Tim Berners Lee original vision expressed in simple words, read this article.
Moses, facing the burning bush, asks G-d about His name, in a conviction that he must pass His name to his fellows, even though they had known Him already. And when the name is uttered, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh — "I Will Be Who I Will Be" — there are no more questions that they have Infinite Power and Infinite Kindness behind them. The very notion of the name — the mystery hidden in it's letters — explained everything.
I try to avoid pompous air in my post — but I do have a feeling we have a birth of the new Web. And the name of it: GIANT-GLOBAL-GRAPH is much more appealing than "Semantic Web". In some sense I'm eager to drop my own-coined term "Web full of Meaning", though I like it very much and despite the fact it had a very cute, allegoric meaning in my mother's tongue: "Sieć pełna znaczeń".
But GGG concept is great because it can simply become this last click on the ratchet in the making of the new machinery of the web of data. Imagine, if we would adopt a habit of naming semantic information on our website as ggg.domain_name.suffix.
Imagine that at ggg.sopekmir.blogspot.com you would find my FOAF definition, the RSS channels and all other semantic information related to my blog. And so on...
GGG was introduced in Tim-Berners-Lee blog post almost 1,5 years ago, but it didn't rise enough attention yet. There are few interesting blog posts here and there. See this as an example and very interesting another one. The fact that Wikipedia article is so short is also discouriging.
Maybe, because of the context - GGG was about Social Networks
But, as Tim wrote: "We can use the word Graph, now, to distinguish from Web." and for good - the Web is a web of documents, the Graph is a web of data, linked and full of meaning.
For both machines and us, mere mortals....
If you are new to the field, read good Wikipedia article about Semantic Web.
For Tim Berners Lee original vision expressed in simple words, read this article.
For the best introduction into Sematic Web, get "Semantic Web for Dummies" for your bed reading :-)
Monday, April 06, 2009
Raw Data Now
Tim Berners Lee, the unquestionable inventor of World Wide Web is also a great speaker. His greatness comes from the truth and simplicity of his message. It was such 20 years ago when he invented web, it is also today, when he spends all his days on promoting the shift of Internet to the next level. This time he pushes the idea of "Web full of Meaning" - as I call it. "Semantic Web" as it is known to public, "Web 3.0" called by geeks or - "Web of Data" as recent mantra says. All these ideas are just harbingers of what the web of the future could be.
Now - what we could do today? Strive for data. "Raw Data Now" - the new slogan Tim is chanting in the TED's auditorium. See it. For impatients - forward to minute 10:
Now - what we could do today? Strive for data. "Raw Data Now" - the new slogan Tim is chanting in the TED's auditorium. See it. For impatients - forward to minute 10:
Isn't he just great?
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data
Following the post of David's Wienberger on his excellent blog. I read the article written by some Google's scientists carefully. I must admit - it is fascinating.
First, its title "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data" is fully intentional, admitted reference to “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” by Eugene Wigner. Nice play with titles, but it is a bit misleading. The role of mathematics in natural science is just the opposite to the role of pure data in human knowledge. I could elaborate on it longer, but - what strikes me deeply, is another thing.
It seems that authors dismiss the message of Semantic Web advocates, among them, Tim Berners-Lee, for reasons that are not very clear.
Let me cite: " (...) But even if we have a formal Semantic Web “Company Name” attribute, we can’t expect to have an ontology for every possible value of this attribute. For example, we can’t know for sure what company the string “Joe’s Pizza” refers to because hundreds of businesses have that name and new ones are being added all the time. We also can’t always tell which business is meant by the string HP.(...)”
Well, in all Semantic Web proposals we do not care what "Joe's Pizza" or "HP" means!
We care about one thing - that "Joe's Pizza" is The Company Name.
We do not need ontology for the name itself, we need it for a different potential "Company Name" concept !!!
Not everything in this article is plainly bad, though.
What I liked, was the call "So, follow the data" - in some vague sense they reaffirmed the principle of least action of Tim Berners Lee. I also must admit, that the distinction of “Semantic Web” from “Semantic Interpretation” is very convincing and it is another good part of the article.
Finally, I often think, that Google would be The One who could push Semantic Web forward. And for some reason they don't.
They could simple cry out loudly: "Hi webmasters around the world - use RDF or microformats to mark your contact/author data and we will use it in our search engine!"
Apart from conspiracy theories, there is something in this article, written by Google researches that justifies their unwillingness to start the ball rolling...
This post was first published as comment on David Weinberger and Seb Schmoller blogs.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
We are the threads holding the world together ...
"Weaving the Web" by Tim Berners-Lee is a must-read not only for computer or Internet geeks but for all of us who explore the philosophical layers of modern culture.
The book has two distinctive, though formally indistinguishable parts. The first one describes the web history, since its inception in 1989 and 1990, through the establishment of W3C consortium, till 1997 - the birth of XML.
This is very deep, fascinating and personal account written by the real creator of the Web.
However, the second part is even more interesting - and this is the best part of the book.
It explores the most important, philosophical tenents of the web - ideas that are fundamental, yet not really well known.
Let me mention only few:
Tim Berners-Lee shows the deep social significance of the web when he writes:
"Link by link we build paths of understanding across the web of humanity".
One of the best part of the book is that about Semantic Web - where in simple words, and through simple examples, Tim, explains this amazing idea of "web of data" or "web of meaning".
The book has two distinctive, though formally indistinguishable parts. The first one describes the web history, since its inception in 1989 and 1990, through the establishment of W3C consortium, till 1997 - the birth of XML.
This is very deep, fascinating and personal account written by the real creator of the Web.
However, the second part is even more interesting - and this is the best part of the book.
It explores the most important, philosophical tenents of the web - ideas that are fundamental, yet not really well known.
Let me mention only few:
- The principle of least power - the basic motivation behind the design of HTML and XML
- Neutralization of the net - the principle of non-biased services on the net
- Free choice and free speech right - realised by the unlimited right to link to everything
- A Universal space - the web can, in principle, hold ANY data and ANY object
Tim Berners-Lee shows the deep social significance of the web when he writes:
"Link by link we build paths of understanding across the web of humanity".
One of the best part of the book is that about Semantic Web - where in simple words, and through simple examples, Tim, explains this amazing idea of "web of data" or "web of meaning".
Even though, we still do not have Semantic Web in action, and we still do not understand why - Tim Berners-Lee enthusiasm, expressed in these chapters, gives us the hope, for the (r)evolution to come soon, and change the landscape of the net ....
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Semantic Web Revisited
This is a review of an article ... But how important !
Semantic Web, the term I translate to my native language as "Web full of Meaning" has not realized its promises - this is clear to everybody who watches after the development. Why?
Before I go to the article and thoughts in it (By Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall and .., last but not least - Tim Berners-Lee Himself !!!), let me shortly tell what this "Web full of Meaning" was supposed to be?
Tim Berners-Lee wrote once (1999):
"I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize."
In another short explanation, we can contrast the current web which contains documents with future Semantic Web, which will contain ASSERTIONS and data that can be understood by machines - not only by us - humans.....
Tim Berners-Lee launched the Semantic Web in 2001 in seminal article in Scientific American.
The promise of the expression of meaning, unambiguous knowledge representation was great. We would be on a path to realize that promise through the use of RDF, Ontologies and intelligent agents.
8 years later - and we know where we are. We have Google. Nothing more :-)
What is the reason?
In 2006, Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall and Tim Berners-Lee made a review of Semantic Web Development, after 5 years of the first article.
Honestly - I'm not impressed at all. We still do not understand why we do not have it, and there are no simple clues - when and how to get there.
Authors made interesting survey of the progress over that 5 years, and some of the achievements are really impressive - GRDDL - allows to extract RDF data from XML (XHTML), various steps done within Web Ontologies, web scale tagging (folksonomies).
But the article still falls short to explain the fundamental failure of the promise.
I have no enough knowledge to judge - I only know a tiny part of Semantic Web, so I will not even try to answer "why" !
But I quite often think of two things:
1) In the world, where "everything is miscellaneous" - do we ever have a chance to build "Web full of Meaning" ? See soem comments about it here.
2) We should start from small things. From Microformats, from simple RDFA and use them for simple, yet practical things - for example - to annotate all addresses we put into our websites with semantic information - THIS IS THE ADDRESS !!! And so on.
If we start from big ("deep" as authors write) ontologies - we can not start the ball rolling .....
Finally - I'm not even sure if I'm right. Semantic Web failure is the big mystery to me ....
Semantic Web, the term I translate to my native language as "Web full of Meaning" has not realized its promises - this is clear to everybody who watches after the development. Why?
Before I go to the article and thoughts in it (By Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall and .., last but not least - Tim Berners-Lee Himself !!!), let me shortly tell what this "Web full of Meaning" was supposed to be?
Tim Berners-Lee wrote once (1999):
"I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize."
In another short explanation, we can contrast the current web which contains documents with future Semantic Web, which will contain ASSERTIONS and data that can be understood by machines - not only by us - humans.....
Tim Berners-Lee launched the Semantic Web in 2001 in seminal article in Scientific American.
The promise of the expression of meaning, unambiguous knowledge representation was great. We would be on a path to realize that promise through the use of RDF, Ontologies and intelligent agents.
8 years later - and we know where we are. We have Google. Nothing more :-)
What is the reason?
In 2006, Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall and Tim Berners-Lee made a review of Semantic Web Development, after 5 years of the first article.
Honestly - I'm not impressed at all. We still do not understand why we do not have it, and there are no simple clues - when and how to get there.
Authors made interesting survey of the progress over that 5 years, and some of the achievements are really impressive - GRDDL - allows to extract RDF data from XML (XHTML), various steps done within Web Ontologies, web scale tagging (folksonomies).
But the article still falls short to explain the fundamental failure of the promise.
I have no enough knowledge to judge - I only know a tiny part of Semantic Web, so I will not even try to answer "why" !
But I quite often think of two things:
1) In the world, where "everything is miscellaneous" - do we ever have a chance to build "Web full of Meaning" ? See soem comments about it here.
2) We should start from small things. From Microformats, from simple RDFA and use them for simple, yet practical things - for example - to annotate all addresses we put into our websites with semantic information - THIS IS THE ADDRESS !!! And so on.
If we start from big ("deep" as authors write) ontologies - we can not start the ball rolling .....
Finally - I'm not even sure if I'm right. Semantic Web failure is the big mystery to me ....
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
ASPexplore offline apps and RSS/RDF feeds
I have tried an interesting and very, very simple thing. Using ASPexplore I wrote a little app that goes (using XMLHTTP) to some indicated place on the web where I have an RSS feeds - and displays them (XSLT transformed) right on the desktop. I was inspired by Juicy Studio examples. Nothing special, one would say, but it is just beautiful to see these little things working right. In this case it is this little app that can be build using ASPexplore in 15 minutes and display things beautifully.
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