The Semantic Web Challenge 2010 details landed in my inbox this morning. My first reaction was to refine my spam filter. 😉 Just teasing. My second and more considered reaction was to think about the “challenge” in terms of topic maps.
Particularly because a posting from the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative arrived the same day, in response to a posting from sameas.org.
I freely grant that URIs that cannot distinguish between identifiers and resources without 303 overhead are poor design. But the fact remains that there are many data sets, representing large numbers of subjects that have even poorer subject identification practices. And there are no known approaches that are going to result in the conversion of those data sets.
Personally I am unwilling to wait until some new “perfect” language for data sweeps the planet and results in all data being converted into the “perfect” format. Anyone who thinks that is going to happen needs to stand with the end-of-the-world-in-2012 crowd. They have a lot in common. Magical thinking being one common trait.
The question for topic mappers to answer is how do we attribute to whatever data language we are confronting, characteristics that will enable us to reliably merge information about subjects in that format either with other information in the same or another data language? Understanding that the necessary characteristics may vary from data language to data language.
Take the lack of a distinction between identifier and resource in the Semantic Web for instance. One easy step towards making use of such data would be to attribute to each URI the status of either being an identifier or a resource. I suspect, but cannot say, that the authors/users of those URIs know the answer to that question. It seems even possible that some sets of such URIs are all identifiers and if so marked/indicated in some fashion, they automatically become useful as just that, identifiers (without 303 overhead).
As identifiers they may lack the resolution that topic maps provide to the human user, which enables them to better understand what subject is being identified. But, since topic maps can map additional identifiers together, when you encounter a deficient identifier, simply create another one for the same subject and map them together.
I think we need to view the Semantic Web data sets as opportunities to demonstrate how understanding subject identity, however that is indicated, is the linchpin to meaningful integration of data about subjects.
Bearing in mind that all our identifications, Semantic Web, topic map or otherwise, are always local, provisional and subject to improvement, in the eye of another.
[…] Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity « Semantic Web Challenge […]
Pingback by Authoritative Identifications? « Another Word For It — May 31, 2010 @ 4:17 pm
The usefulness of somebody else’s names for things depends on (among other things) the clearheadedness and self-discipline of the namer. Careless naming and careless usage of names makes them hard to exploit.
How to handle ambiguous, inappropriate, and changing names in contexts where ambiguity is insupportable or intolerable? Elastic bridges between evolving universes of discourse are needed. Such bridges — like all bridges between moving endpoints — constantly devour human maintenance attention. Without such attention, they become useless.
A living topic map is an instance of a performance artform — a realtime art like music, dance, and drama. An artist with vision, discipline and skill is required.
I’m trying to think of something similar in literature, and I’ve come up with two examples that I find compelling:
(1) The Talmud, which reflects a history of intellectual refinement and innovation. Here, the artist is many thinkers/writers whose mutual bondage to a rich common tradition unifies their work, allowing them to perform as a single artist would.
(2) Walt Whitman’s *Leaves of Grass*, which is actually many editions, the sequence of which reflects Whitman’s changing/unchanging vision like the frames of a movie.
If either of these were works-in-progress today, they’d be websites. If those websites were subject-oriented, reflecting a disciplined correspondence between subjects and tangible reifiers, they’d be topic maps.
If there were a third subject-oriented website whose universe of discourse attempted to encompass the evolving Talmudic and Whitman universes, that website would reflect its author’s evolving grasp of those universes. This third website would change whenever the Talmud and/or Leaves of Grass website changed, *and* it would change whenever its author’s understanding of either of them changed. And it would change in other ways, as the artist him/her/itself changed.
The deep Semantic Web challenge is to come up with power tools for such artists. We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. It’s crucial to recognize that it’s neither practical nor helpful to seek to build bridges only between stationary endpoints, or to focus our attention on stabilizing the endpoints. We really need to focus our attention on facilitating the maintenance of elastic bridges whose endpoints stay anchored in their moving targets. The targets will keep moving.
Comment by Steve Newcomb — June 1, 2010 @ 8:49 am
Steve,
Err, I am not sure that the Talmud reflects “…a common tradition [that] unifies their work….”
A common tradition to be sure but it is the “unifies” part that I find problematic.
Caveat: What I know of the Talmud is entirely second hand from works like Back To The Sources and similar commentaries on the Talmud, as well as reading parts of it in translation.
The Talmud as I understand it, rather than reflecting a consistent view rather reflects how a religious tradition works out a view over time and in particular contexts. Or as Robert Goldenberg (in his section in Back to the Sources) “Its chief purpose is to preserve the record of earlier generations studying their own tradition and provide materials for later generations wishing to do the same.” (emphasis in original)
I don’t think that implies a “discipline[d] correspondence between subjects and tangible reifiers.” I suspect most of us have a rough consistency of correspondence between subjects and their tangible reifiers, but only a rough one.
I am not sure how we would judge the consistency of other people with regard to their subjects? Since that judgment, like the existence of their [other] minds, lies entirely in their purview.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — June 5, 2010 @ 3:15 pm