Why Semantics?
In February I gave a tutorial and a talk at the most awesome conference ever (go Tash!) called Webstock, in Wellington, New Zealand. The talk was called Why Semantics, and was essentially about the ideas behind the semantic web and why they’re interesting to normal working developers. After I gave the talk, I had several famous (at least to me) developers tell me that they finally got it, had made many of the data-modeling mistakes that I outlined, and no longer thought the Semantic Web was all hype.
The video was just uploaded to Vimeo by the Webstock team:
(if the embed isn’t showing, you can find the video here)
And here’s the abstract:
Ever since there was a web, people have been talking about the “semantic web”, which is always just around the corner. Even though this hasn’t exactly gone to plan, people working on the ideas behind semantic data modeling have actually come up with a lot of cool stuff.
Modern web development is very concerned with rapid iteration, which has led to the increasing popularity of lightweight frameworks built on dynamic languages such as Rails, Pylons and Django. However, most of us are still stuck using traditional data-modeling methods like relational databases which aren’t designed for constant schema changes. Further, because people don’t think about “standard” ways to share data, there are thousands of different web APIs, all of which have to be dealt with separately.
In this talk Toby will explain what “semantic data” is, how entities and data can be modeled using graphs, and show examples of modeling, integrating, and extending data models for large datasets. You’ll lean how the semantic models support rapid and iterative application development, and easy integration of existing databases. Toby will introduce fast scalable back-ends for storing and querying semantic data and show examples of semantic data already available on the web.
He’ll also briefly discuss how these approaches lead into the standards-based Semantic Web, and how attendees can find short-term value in adopting some of the Semantic Web standards and platforms.
Enjoy! Let me know what you think.
Update: You can find a PDF of the slides here.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
OK, I only read your abstract, but I don’t understand why people call this “semantic web”. When I read it, I see, “data stores that accomodate flexible schemas”, “multiple data source integration”, “standardized data formats and protocols”.
These are all great things, but I don’t understand what makes them “semantic”. I guess they’re more abstracted than unstructured text, sure…
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Well, I’d say all data is “semantic”, in that it represents something that can be described (hopefully). What people usually mean when they say “semantic data” is that the semantics are actually part of the data format.
The reason this makes flexible schemas possible is that the store uses the simplest possible schema (subject-predicate-object) and everything else (including what would be considered “schema” in a relational database) is actually part of the data itself.
But if you’re point is that the “Semantic Web” community has done a very poor job of explaining the terms, you’ll get no argument from me
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:39 am
Do the semantic web and cybernetic theory have a happy love story in the stars? How can graph theory, cybernetics, semantic databases, open APIs, highspeed internet and dynamic social groupings come together? Is anyone thinking about this stuff… thank you.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Great talk, watched the whole thing!
Pity that you ran out of time at the end, but this certainly motivates to get the book (i see it is already in “rough cuts” in safari books online).
June 4th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Would you be willing to post the slides you used? This is fascinating stuff, thank you.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Just updated the post with a link to the slides
June 6th, 2009 at 4:54 am
The issue here, and in many articles is how they address or name the new concept, I think semantic web was one of the worst and most confusing name ever. Berner lee officially changed it to linked datam which makes mch more sense for the web 2.0, the word semantic should be used for the web 3.0 like in semantic search.
That is all, let me know if you have doubts cause I know what means what since I am dedicating myself to linguistics.
Very intresting blog
N
August 1st, 2009 at 4:01 am
To me semantic web and wordnet are based on false assumptions, an incomplete model and abuse of the spacetime concept. Syntax and morphological parsing will never result in a semantic meaning as terminal symbols are not the point. Grammar makes sense if verbal strings are divided into groups of grammar words and content words. Content words are basically the elements of a FOL, but you need more that that: you have top be able to appreciate that without verbs that represent relations you cannot have a proper and comprehensive ontology, hence a decent semantic web either.
Besides it should be realized that there are no absolute specific-generic, abstract-concrete, etc. terms or knowledge without defining the relation to the knowledge of the eye of the beholder.
Frank
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
While this matter can be very difficult for most people, my impression is that there has to be a middle or common ground that we all can find. I do treasure that you’ve added pertinent and rational commentary here though. Thank you!