Why do we call it ‘The Semantic Web? The web is nothing but a collection of electronic files. Where is the “semantic” in those files? (Even with linking, same question.)
Same text, different semantics. With the later ones viewed as being “correct.” Yet it would be essential to record the hieroglyphic semantics of Kircher to understand the discussions of his contemporaries and those who relied on his work. One text, multiple semantics.
All our search, reasoning, etc., engines can do is to mechanically apply patterns and return content to us. The returned content has no known “semantic” until we assign it one. Different users may supply different semantics to the same content.
Perhaps a better name would be “The Matching Web (semantics supplied by users)”.*
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*Then we could focus on managing the semantics supplied by users. A different task than the one underway in the “Semantic Web” at present.
I was expecting a paper on tiling of an identity plane but it was just as delightful. Anyone who has ever shopped for paint or tile, particularly with one’s spouse, , can understand the importance of color/pattern matching.
This paper is a good illustration of how pattern matching can be used to assist users, albeit, not in a topic map context. Its application to the construction of a topic map would be just one step further.
Developers of topic map applications targeting real world data will find a number of insights and techniques in this collection of papers.
The wiki-page offers a variety of resources on IPR issues.
ONTOLOG (a.k.a. “Ontolog Forum”) is an open, international, virtual community of practice devoted to advancing the field of ontology, ontological engineering and semantic devoted to advancing the field of ontology, ontological engineering and semantic technology, and advocating their adoption into mainstream applications and international standards.
It is also a good idea for a topic map authoring interface.
Say you get ten (10) “hits” back from a search. Add a “checkbox” to each “hit.” Unchecked means same as other unchecked “hits.” Checked means different from the unchecked “hits.”
The “same subject” judgment becomes a collective one of all the users of the search interface. Different “hits” are going to be unchecked in any search return.
A Treemap is a visualization of hierarchical data that uses squares to represent nodes in a tree. The size of a square depends upon a value assigned to it, based on some range of measurement. One drawback of this method is that complex or deep hierarchies are difficult to render for effective use.
The authors provide an excellent introduction to Treemaps, the current state of their use, as well as providing a method that allows the use of Treemaps visualizations with arbitrary shapes.
Computationally complex, Voronoi Treemaps may not be appropriate for real-time renderings of topic maps or domains for mapping.
The visualization of data domains as an aid to the creation of topic maps should include Voronoi Treemaps as part of its research agenda.
Is search passé? is an intriguing question asked at the Montangue Institute Review for August, 2010. Unfortunately, not being a member, I can’t summarize their answer for you.
It really isn’t that hard to guess some of them. I blogged about Blair and Maron saying twenty-five years ago:
Stated succinctly, it is impossibly difficult for users to predict the exact words, word combinations, and phrases that are used by all (or most) relevant documents and only (or primarily) by those documents, as can be seen in the following examples.
Documents and texts haven’t changed in the last twenty-five years. If anything, the problem has gotten worse due to the volume and variety of material that is now available for searching.
This is a semantic and therefore human judgment problem. Algorithms and “clever” data structures can assist human users in making those judgments, but can’t replace them in the loop.
Imagine a search engine that seeks the assistance of users on semantic issues. As opposed to the skulking around of current search engines and sites. Why not just ask? Politely.
A user-fed search engine with a topic map backend. That could be very interesting.
The article is not yet available on my university server but I will keep a watch for it and will report back when I have more details. The author links are to their DBLP records.
Try the following searches on “merging operators” in DBLP and CiteSeerX:
Possibilistic logic provides a good framework for dealing with merging problems when information is pervaded with uncertainty and inconsistency. Many merging operators in possibilistic logic have been proposed. However, there are still some important problems left unsolved.
Makes me curious about the “Many merging operators….” No promises of when but it would be interesting to start a list of those both within and without possibilistic logic.
, can understand the importance of color/pattern matching.