Semantics of the Semantic Web for Us
Semantics being about relationships and meaning, I’m attempting to apply the term in a personal, communal, and resultant way as I see tools being actively developed. By us, I mean the users, consumers, constituents, or any other term currently being applied to hundreds of millions of non-enterprise users.
From semantic search engines such as Powerset to ontological database tools such as Snap Logic, the next generation of functionality would seem to be approaching. I do take note of the w3.org site statement on the summary of OWL flavors… “It is unlikely that any reasoning software will be able to support complete reasoning for every feature of OWL Full.”, and also note that there is little reference to the full potential for individual and societal use of and benefit from the semantic web now under construction.
The machine quest for meaning still seems to be about extracting more useful information from and about us.
Would we all benefit from better search? Certainly. Powerset, Hakia, and others, aim to compete with Google.
Would our use of social networks, blogs, etc., be enhanced by better ways of organizing data? Undoubtedly. Snap Logic can play a role in social network integration at an enterprise level and Aperture could be an integral component of, say, a Facebook or its successor. (Both of these are, I believe, open source based.)
Where, though, are the plans to put semantic computing power, such as it will be, in our hands?
Tim O’Reilly, in his recent post on the topic, writes that the semantic web means…
“the design of applications that don’t require people to think at all about ontology or document structure”
and that…
“Rather than there being a single specification capturing all the information about relationships between people, there will be many overlapping (and gapping) applications, and an opportunity for someone to aggregate the available information into something more meaningful.”
Who is that someone? A Google, whose real customers are advertisers? A Microsoft, as unlikely as that may be, whose aim is to remain one of our dominant connections to the internet?
My abiding question is why those opportunities can’t belong to a lot of ’someones’, namely us.
The usual and obvious answer to that is that someone has to pay for all this development, and for the servers and data storage and bandwidth, and the someone paying is invariably a VC or 3 driven by the goal of capturing market share first, and monetizing second. There appear to be few business models in which we participate directly in the Semantic Web.
Why? The most successful web projects, in terms of real profitability (rather than stock valuations based on media industry multiples of eyeballs), are still eBay and Amazon, businesses based on consumer activities that far exceed the scope of many current start ups.
Reading Nova Spivack’s response to Tim O’Reilly’s post, I come to his term folktologies, which he illustrates using the example of Freebase.
His description of potential applications does seem to envision these tools in our hands, giving each of us the ability to ‘make each other smarter’, but Freebase is yet one more VC funded behemoth of a startup which makes no mention of an economic model.
I do prefer Nova’s view to Tim’s, if only because it envisions computer users capable of contributing to ontologies. The idea that non-techies can’t manage such an activity and wouldn’t want to anyway is hard to understand for anyone who watched eBay grow, who watched millions of non-tech users navigate hundreds of esoteric categories and figure out how to double and triple list items for the best exposure. Next time someone says that people can’t do classification, think of those millions of non-tech collectors and dealer in eBay’s glory days of Web 1.0.
Perhaps I am wrong, and the average users, the Us I refer to, are perfectly happy to accept whatever we are offered for free with no concern about responsibility for future access to the content we and others contribute, but I do not believe this. What I do believe is that we need far more entrepreneurial focus on economic models in which we can participate beyond putting ads on blogs.
Develop this proposition fully, and it can even, when built out, address the most basic issue of geographical access monopolies. We can make this place economically viable and much more so if we all participate.
Economic models which involve us, the participants who are, increasingly, the content providers, would distribute the control of this new world, control which is currently held in a very few hands. It would distribute risk and profit and the common good and a public trust, and it would truly enable free enterprise. It is a concept which can embrace the multitudinous goals and dreams of many for the benefit of ourselves and each other. It is a disruptive concept, and no doubt frightening to some and threatening to others, however it can be a basis for prosperity on every level. I also believe that it is our best hope of protecting our freedom.
There are many workable models of communal combined with private ownership in recent history that equate to both successful businesses and healthy communities. Examples include co-op high-rises in urban centers and successful franchises. These larger economic models are indicative of how elements such as small community business, home based businesses, home ownership, and the dynamics under which these co-exist integrate into the fabric of a healthy and free society. Such human scale enterprises are invariably connected to public resources and cultural riches to which we all contribute. They are supporting elements of those overlapping circles within community structures to which Tim O’Reilly refers.
Every type of human endeavor is already represented online, all striving in competition for traffic and a Google Page Rank. A true semantic web, in my definition, requires enabling and forging the natural connections and interactions of a healthy society. These are as central to human meaning as triplets are to ontological databases.
The internet should remain free. Free access to information and free speech are our greatest treasures, both individually and globally. The infrastructure, however, has to be built on an economic model. The ownership of that model goes hand in hand with control of it. I believe that, in order to fully develop a semantic web, we need to create more and better means of full human participation in it.
What say you?
