Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

February 2, 2012

Introducing Hypernotation, an alternative to Linked Data

Filed under: Hypernotation,Linked Data,Semantic Web — Patrick Durusau @ 3:49 pm

Introducing Hypernotation, an alternative to Linked Data

A competing notation to Linked Data:

From the post:

URL, URI, IRI, URIref, CURIE, QName, slash URIs, hash URIs, bnodes, information resources, non-information resources, dereferencability, HTTP 303, redirection, content-negotiation, RDF model, RDF syntax, RDFa core, RDFa lite, Microdata, Turtle, N3, RDF/XML, JSON-LD, RDF/JSON…

Want to publish some data? Well, these are some of the things you will have to learn and understand to do so. Is the concept of data really so hard that you can’t publish it without understanding the concepts of information and non-information resources? Do you really need to deal with the HTTP 303 redirection and a number of different syntaxes? It’s just data, damn it!

Really, how have we got to this?

I did a detailed analysis on the problems of Linked Data, but it seems that I missed the most important thing. It’s not about the Web technologies but about economics. The key Linked Data problem is that it holds a monopoly in the market. One can’t compare it to anything else, and thus one can’t be objective about it. There is no competition, and without competition, there is no real progress. Without competition, it’s possible for many odd ideas to survive, such as requiring people to implement HTTP 303 redirection.

As a competitor to Linked Data, this proposal should lead to a re-examination of many of the decisions that have lead to and sustain Linked Data. I say “should,” not that it will lead to such a re-examination. At least not now. Perhaps when the next “universal” semantic syntax comes along.

You may find An example of Hypernotation useful in reading the Hypernotation post.

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