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06/03/2004 Archived Entry: "semantic web"
Need to read through all of Shirky's rant on the semantic web, but the first thing that strikes me odd is his calling it a web which functions by the syllogism. What I've understood about Berners-Lee concept is that it isn't syllogistic at all, but associative (thus, semantic), and not dependent on premises. As I write in my (still unpublished) Rhetoric of Cool manuscript:
Berners-Lee’s concept of URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers, transitive addresses that tell browsers where to find information) as opposed to the current URLs (Uniform Resource Locators, the version in place today on the Web which is more static than URIs) relies on a semantic system of writing (like Ulmer’s chorography) at the level of cool. Berners-Lee writes:
What makes a cool URI?
A cool URI is one which does not change.
What sorts of URI change?
URIs don't change: people change them.In the Berners-Lee excerpt, I understand “cool URI” not to mean “a worthwhile URI” but rather a URI indicative of the McLuhanist definition of cool, a highly interactive writing space. Berners-Lee’s cool URI comprises a part of his semantic Web, a medium where writing relates by semantic meanings. The semantic Web indicates a general interest in the principles of cool as I have been outlining them so far. I see cool URIs at work in my own juxtapositions found throughout this book (and which motivated me through the temporal associations in 1963); by writing with the interconnected semantic meanings of one term, I am composing by associative logic.
Replies: 1 Comment
Jeff,
I don't think Shirky's intent here is to take on TBL. I'd have to look further to answer more completely, but my initial guess is that TBL's trying to describe an ideal, while Shirky's critiquing some of the "systems" under development to reach that ideal. Put another way, for TBL, the web is semantic, while for CS, we shouldn't be doing certain things to achieve a Semantic Web.
Not sure if that helps much. Shirky's skeptical of any realization bc any such attempt is doomed to get gamed (comment spam, e.g.), and bc metadata quickly moves from representation of fact to interpretation of truth.
I'm not sure if this is helpful or not, so let me suggest this link: http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/03/22/relationship_two_worldviews.php
Shirky's critiquing the RELATIONSHIP lang developed by the FOAF project, and he analogs it with the AI debate, which I found really helpful. In terms of your own post, it sounded like the FOAF folk were imagining metadata that would move further and further away from McLuhanist cool.
One more try: Shirky's emphasis, I think, is not on the SW per se, so much as it is with attempts to date to actually implement it. Think KB's bureaucratization of the imaginative, perhaps, with TBL as imaginative, and CS as critique of bureaucratization?
Hope one of those helps... cgb
Posted by cgb @ 06/08/2004 04:06 AM EST