SCN: Semantic web

[Joe Mabel]

Does anyone other than me find it perversely fascinating that on the ooe hand 
this talks somewhat idealistically about a "world brain" and on the other hand 
when in comes down to actual applications, the discussion is of more efficiently 
devastating a third world country by better coordination of military force?

I remain generally on the side of the "people should think, computers should 
compute" school. So many AI fantasies come down to avoiding moral responsibility 
for the concrete consequences of abstract decisions. 

As for the specifically military side of the fantasy, part of the perverse 
fascination is the recerring belief that somehow such technologies can be 
developed and then remain uniquely at the beck and call of the American Empire. 

Are we building a future in which every common person may ask, like Henry II,  
"Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" and leave it to someone (or, more 
precisely, something) else to draw the consequences?  
(http://www.digiserve.com/peter/becket.htm for those of you who don't know the 
reference.)

--------------------
Joe Mabel, in his ironic capacity as cyberLuddite.

On Fri, 22 Feb 2002, Doug Schuler wrote:

> 
> I met one of the main people behind this effort last November in Kyoto.  
> My question to him: People have been working with semantic nets for 20
> years without gaining any particular value out of that approach -- why did
> he think that moving it to the web would do it?  He thought that making
> the conceptual underpinnings available to all might make the payoff
> *emerge* -- and he might be right.  The effort was quite heavily funded by
> military R&D and corporations.  I'm not sure what their vision is vs.,
> say, what an SCN type vision is. (PS. for my more *political* view of a
> "world brain" see http://www.infosoc.co.uk/current/Featurearticle4.2.pdf.)
> 
> -- Doug
> 
>    ******************************************************************
>    *     SHAPING THE NETWORK SOCIETY                                *
>    *          Patterns for Participation, Action, and Change        *
>    *                  http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/diac02        *
>    * Tomorrow's information and communication infrastructure        *
>    *   is being shaped today.                                       *
>    *                              But by whom and to what ends?     *
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>    ******************************************************************
> 
> 
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2002, Steve wrote:
> 
> > x-no-archive: yes
> > 
> > ===================
> > 
> > 
> > (Otis Port, BusinessWeek, excerpts)---Tim Berners-Lee...wanted to make 
> > the world a richer place, not amass personal wealth. So he gave his 
> > brainchild to us all.  
> > 
> > Now, the idealistic father of the Web plans an even grander gift: a next-
> > generation Web that almost certainly will rank as the most important 
> > software of this decade. Berners-Lee regards today's Web as a rebellious 
> > adolescent that can never fulfill his original expectations. By 2005, he 
> > hopes to begin replacing it with the Semantic Web--a smart network that 
> > will finally understand human languages and make computers virtually as 
> > easy to work with as other humans.  
> > 
> > This new project is a collaborative effort of hundreds of minds, with 
> > Berners-Lee as maestro. The ultimate goal: to turn the Web into a gigantic 
> > brain. 
> > 
> > Every computer connected to the Internet would have access to all the 
> > knowledge that humankind has accumulated in science, business, and the 
> > arts since we began painting the walls of caves 30,000 years ago. This 
> > racial memory would be a constant source of inspiration for dreaming 
> > sublime dreams, boosting human creativity, and solving previously 
> > intractable problems. 
> > 
> > Online commerce chores and Web services would be handled by software 
> > modules that snap together like toy Lego blocks. "We expect the Semantic 
> > Web to be as big a revolution as the original Web itself," says Richard 
> > Hayes-Roth, Hewlett-Packard's chief technology officer for software.  
> > 
> > To get there, though, Berners-Lee must navigate some very muddy 
> > waters. Development of the Semantic Web is being funded mainly by the 
> > World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which he heads. Founded in 1994 
> > and based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the W3C is the 
> > guardian of Web technology and standards. Its budget relies heavily on 
> > membership dues from more than 400 companies. 
> > 
> > And while making money may not be a primary motivator for Berners-Lee, 
> > it's what business is all about. Conflicts, in short, were inevitable--and not 
> > just centering around Berners-Lee. Indeed, mediating the inevitable 
> > clashes among W3C's hundreds of companies, each with its own agenda, 
> > will be the acid test of Berners-Lee's leadership.  
> > 
> > A particularly thorny issue cropped up last August. A W3C committee of 13 
> > members, including IBM and Microsoft, proposed installing tollbooths on 
> > the Information Highway by allowing patented software to be included in 
> > W3C-approved standards. The committee reasoned that as online 
> > offerings grow more sophisticated, the developers of software for handling 
> > advanced Web services, such as supply-chain management and 
> > collaborative engineering, should be permitted to collect royalties on their 
> > investments. 
> > 
> > But Berners-Lee is philosophically opposed to standards that would 
> > impose fees, and many other W3C members, such as the Free Software 
> > Foundation and the Open Source Initiative, also denounced the notion. 
> > "Things have calmed down a bit," says Robert S. Sutor, IBM's director of e-
> > business standards, and the committee is now rethinking its stance. 
> > Berners-Lee says the mood has now shifted "strongly toward a royalty-
> > free position."  
> > 
> > Meanwhile, the W3C is taking heat on other fronts. Critics say the 
> > organization is moving too slowly on developing standards to ensure that 
> > different Web-service offerings can work together. 
> > 
> > Business sees major revenue growth from better tools that can deal with 
> > complicated travel arrangements, say, or deliver new entertainment 
> > options. But companies are reluctant to invest in developing such software 
> > until big corporations are on the same page. 
> > 
> > What good would it do, for example, to create a program under Microsoft's 
> > Web-services initiative, dubbed .Net, if it couldn't link up with a related 
> > program written in Java for Sun Microsystems' counterpart? Or if a 
> > computer-aided design program at Boeing 
> > Corp. were unable to talk to the company's engineering or 
> > manufacturing software?  
> > 
> > A W3C draft specification aimed at harmonizing Web services was 
> > published in January, 2001, "but the W3C then sat on its hands for 
> > a whole year" complains Uttam M. Narsu, an analyst at Giga 
> > Information Group. Not until late January did the W3C organize 
> > several working groups to tackle standards for Web services. 
> > 
> > "My sense is that W3C staffers are too visionary," Narsu says. 
> > "They're devoting too much effort to the Semantic Web, believing it 
> > will change the world yet again, and not enough effort to less sexy 
> > things that are important to business in the near term."  
> > 
> > The Semantic Web is certainly sexy. As envisioned by Berners-
> > Lee, it would understand not only the meaning of words and 
> > concepts but also the logical relationships among them. That has 
> > awesome potential. 
> > 
> > Most knowledge is built on two pillars: semantics and mathematics. 
> > In number-crunching, computers already outclass people. 
> > Machines that are equally adroit at dealing with language and 
> > reason won't just help people uncover new insights; they could 
> > blaze new trails on their own.  
> > 
> > Even with a fairly crude version of this future Web, mining online 
> > repositories for nuggets of knowledge would no longer force 
> > people to wade through screen after screen of extraneous data. 
> > Instead, computers would dispatch intelligent agents, or software 
> > messengers, to explore Web sites by the thousands and logically 
> > sift out just what's relevant. 
> > 
> > That alone would provide a major boost in productivity at work and 
> > at home. But there's far more.  
> > 
> > Software agents could also take on many routine business chores, 
> > such as helping manufacturers find and negotiate with lowest-cost 
> > parts suppliers and handling help-desk questions. The Semantic 
> > Web would also be a bottomless trove of eureka insights. 
> > 
> > Most inventions and scientific breakthroughs, including today's 
> > Web, spring from novel combinations of existing knowledge. The 
> > Semantic Web would make it possible to evaluate more 
> > combinations overnight than a person could juggle in a lifetime. 
> > 
> > "A lot of scientific research is now interdisciplinary, like global 
> > climate change, and the scientists need to talk to each other," says 
> > Chaitanya Baru, a data-mining expert at the San Diego 
> > Supercomputer Center. "But they use different jargon."  
> > 
> > Sure, scientists and other people can post ideas on the Web today 
> > for others to read. But with machines doing the reading and 
> > translating jargon terms, related ideas from millions of Web pages 
> > could be distilled and summarized. That will lift the ability to assess 
> > and integrate information to new heights.  
> > 
> > As a result, Berners-Lee envisions a new age of enlightenment. 
> > The Semantic Web, he predicts, "will help more people become 
> > more intuitive as well as more analytical. It will foster global 
> > collaborations among people with diverse cultural perspectives, so 
> > we have a better chance of finding the right solutions to the really 
> > big issues--like the environment and climate warming." In short, it 
> > will change the world even more than his original creation.  
> > 
> > The capital-Q question is: Can he pull it off? There's no shortage 
> > of doubters. Still, most people who know the reclusive Berners-Lee 
> > are optimistic. "Tim has a gift for seeing the future and making it 
> > happen," says John R. Patrick, a retired IBM senior exec who 
> > helped found the W3C. 
> > 
> > Eric E. Schmidt, formerly of Sun and now chairman of search-
> > engine innovator Google Inc., says Berners-Lee would be a shoo-
> > in for a Nobel prize--if Nobels were given in computer science. And 
> > Larry L. Smarr, director of the California Institute of 
> > Telecommunications & Information Technology at the University of 
> > California at San Diego, predicts the Semantic Web will cast 
> > Berners-Lee as "an historic-level figure."  
> > 
> > What impresses those elder statesmen of computing is Berners-
> > Lee's leadership track record. For a somewhat shy software nerd, 
> > he has demonstrated a surprising flair for diplomacy, combined 
> > with bulldog tenacity. 
> > 
> > In the midst of the dot-com bust two years ago, Berners-Lee 
> > persuaded the W3C's hard-nosed denizens of commerce to begin 
> > developing the Semantic Web. And before that, in 1998, he 
> > persuaded them to approve extensible markup language (XML), an 
> > important new Web lingo. "Tim did a great job shepherding XML 
> > through the W3C," notes Smarr.  
> > 
> > Indeed, the evolution of XML may be a useful foretaste of what's in 
> > store for the Berners-Lee's new vision. In the late 1990s, this 
> > language was constructed to help computers identify different 
> > types of data on the Web. "When we started work on XML, it was 
> > considered pretty esoteric," recalls Sutor of IBM. "But now it's the 
> > underpinnings of everything we're doing in e-business." 
> > 
> > Ditto for hundreds of others, including the 300 companies already 
> > using XML software from Open Applications Group Inc. OAGI 
> > predicts that number will double this year.  
> > 
> > Berners-Lee worked tirelessly to win support for XML because it's 
> > a quantum leap beyond today's witless hypertext markup language 
> > (HTML)--and it's the cornerstone of the Semantic Web. 
> > 
> > HTML is the language that Berners-Lee concocted while on a 
> > fellowship as a database engineer at the European Organization 
> > for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. But the language merely 
> > specifies the appearance of a Web page: what colors go where, 
> > which type sizes to use, and where to put graphic elements. 
> > 
> > To a Web browser, or most other computer programs, these words 
> > and numbers are just squiggles of gibberish. Without some kind of 
> > clue, computers parsing a Web page can't determine if "buy" is a 
> > noun or a verb, or whether "20031" is a Zip Code, a price, or the 
> > number of orders placed last month.  
> > 
> > In contrast, XML tags imbue the Web with meaning. Examples 
> > might be labels for medical records. The "name" tag would have 
> > links to relevant sections of online literature, also coded with XML, 
> > and "interaction" would point to other drugs that interfere with the 
> > medication. Then, when a doctor bats out a prescription on a 
> > computer, a software agent could verify that the drug is 
> > appropriate for the diagnosis, check the patient's records to see 
> > what other medicines the person is taking, and determine whether 
> > any of them is likely to interfere with the new prescription. A group 
> > of university and industrial researchers is already working on such 
> > a scheme with the Veterans Administration and the National 
> > Library of Medicine.  
> > 
> > Today, Berners-Lee presides over a research octopus whose 
> > tentacles extend to all five continents. The 60 staffers at W3C 
> > headquarters coordinate the efforts of hundreds of researchers at 
> > 50 university and government laboratories that are W3C members, 
> > plus two-score additional universities around the world. 
> > 
> > For now, most of the actual work on the Semantic Web is being 
> > done by academics because, Berners-Lee quips, "only a few 
> > industry people have been given a little leeway to go off and 
> > explore my crazy ideas."  
> > 
> > XML is a start--but only the tip of the iceberg. XML tags are 
> > essentially just labels that point to a definition in a combination 
> > dictionary and thesaurus. That's how a software agent can 
> > determine that two different tags actually mean the same thing. 
> > When an agent needs further details, there's an online 
> > encyclopedia, called an ontology. It lays out the logical rules and 
> > relationships among XML terms.  
> > 
> > Merging these elements is where semantics gets sticky. Because 
> > we humans assimilate language gradually, we end up unaware of 
> > how complicated things are--until we try to construct a new digital 
> > grammar from scratch, with numerous dialects for various 
> > industries. 
> > 
> > Devising software that can comprehend words, concepts, and 
> > relationships has long been a major hangup in artificial intelligence 
> > (AI) research. Adding a pervasive layer of standardization will test 
> > the limits of human ingenuity--and patience.  
> > 
> > In the fast-paced Internet Age, the time needed to build consensus 
> > on the smallest of these details could be the Semantic Web's chief 
> > obstacle, says MCI's Cerf. He worries that standards could "fall 
> > victim to business maneuvering" by the W3C's corporate members. 
> > The result might end up similar to today's systems for electronic 
> > data interchange (EDI)--with a lot of proprietary systems, each with 
> > its own lingo. 
> > 
> > On the other hand, partly because the industry is acutely aware of 
> > EDI's problems and limitations, executives are optimistic. "It'll be a 
> > chicken-or-egg situation until a killer app comes along--but I'm very 
> > confident that that will happen," says W. Daniel Hillis, a 
> > supercomputer pioneer who now heads startup Applied Minds Inc.  
> > 
> > Some academics are enthusiastic about the corporate involvement 
> > that Berners-Lee has attracted. James A. Hendler, a computer 
> > scientist at the University of Maryland, says he has worked on AI 
> > for 20 years and "it has been almost impossible to get the attention 
> > of business." But now, he says, "the advances we made in the 
> > 1990s are being readied for actual use with the Semantic Web, out 
> > there in the real world."  
> > 
> > One other factor could give Berners-Lee's vision an enormous 
> > boost: The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects 
> > Agency (DARPA) is pushing it. This is the outfit that created the 
> > guts of the Internet three decades ago. In 1998, it launched the 
> > DARPA Agent MarkUp Language (DAML) program--initially 
> > managed by Hendler, who took a leave of absence from Maryland. 
> > DARPA is now a W3C member, and DAML is being developed in 
> > concert with XML.  
> > 
> > DARPA wants to develop agent-based systems for command-and-
> > control jobs in joint military operations, whether they be 
> > multiservice or multinational. For example, an international team of 
> > 16 organizations--led by a spin-off of Britain's Defense Ministry 
> > called QinetiQ Ltd.--is working on a "coalition of agents" project. 
> > With DAML tags pointing to online databases, plus access to 
> > satellite reconnaissance images, the agents would be aware of the 
> > capabilities and locations of the many different weapons and 
> > logistics systems deployed to such spots as Afghanistan. So they 
> > could provide commanders with instant advice for coping with 
> > shifting conditions.  
> > 
> > DARPA is also funding research at MIT, headed by Berners-Lee 
> > but separate from the W3C, aimed at creating new AI tools for 
> > tomorrow's Web. One result would be Semantic Web logic 
> > language (Swell). Another goal is to marry the Semantic Web with 
> > MIT's Oxygen project, which aims to make various digital systems 
> > as easy to use as breathing, thanks to advanced machine-learning 
> > tricks and new AI software. 
> > 
> > Cailliau, Berners-Lee's former boss at CERN, figures the Web's inventor 
> > relishes this research. "I think Tim does not really like the role" of leading a 
> > big outfit like the W3C, says Cailliau. "He is more comfortable with a small 
> > team and joining in the fun of writing actual code."  
> > 
> > Berners-Lee admits that building consensus among the W3C's members 
> > can be trying at times. But someone needs to keep development of the 
> > Semantic Web on course toward enriching the world--and nobody is better 
> > qualified than Tim.  
> > 
> > 
> > Copyright 2002 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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