Semantic Web is NOT for machines to understand !!!

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

Where does Internet goes - aftermath of Steve Jobs explication

Steve Jobs published his poignant explication why Apple will not endorse Flash. Jobs is quite right when he lists the reasons why Flash is not most liked standard. We can only support him in saying that Flash is proprietary standard owned by Adobe, so it is not Open Standard, that full web experience (including video) should not depend on proprietary pieces of code, that Flash has some security and privacy issues (e.g. Flash Cookies), that it consumes too much of processor time, that interaction model of Flash is bound to personal computer (keys & mouse) paradigm....

But when he utters his final „why” it makes my spine tingle. The problem is in the fact that Flash is cross-platform, and even worse: because it has cross-platform development tools:

„This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms.”

I'm shocked. Of course, Adobe could make Flash better, could open source it. For lack of these steps, I personally, don't like Flash very much. But what in fact is Steve Jobs saying against Flash can be easily said about HTML, and literally against ANY standard, de-facto commercial standard or true Open Standard.

The world according to Jobs is the world of software specifically written against Apple devices, the software that will run only on the devices — and which always give Jobs 30% of revenues...

Come on. This is not the vision of Open World, personal computing and Internet.

Want to see comic version of my denial? See this.

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