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The Semantic Web will subvert itself, Mike.
It becomes a Golem: power to make things
happen plus the authority. Not new news.
This has been inevitable ever since the
System ID was merged into the Public ID
in the form of a URI. All that has held
it back was myopia that insisted identification
and classification could be named by
the same string. It will get messier.
That is why Joshua's example of USENET is
interesting. A global ontology. One assumes
the users have to police it themselves.
Is that more reliable?
As to what says what about whom, why is
that more reliable? The Republicans
used that technique very successfully
to pound a sitting president.
So is that more reliable? Not really.
It is politically correct, that is,
relies not on a "web of trust" but
a hierarchy of authority that one
trusts. Keep autopoiesis in mind.
Feedback mediated systems remain
stable only as long as either they
can control the environment completely,
or can adapt either the environment
or their own features to changes.
That is why intelligent systems are
ranked by the number of sign systems
they can handle competently including
the ability to learn or invent new ones.
It is that old "winners write the history"
problem. That is how we forge our own chains.
len
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@xegesis.org]
7/30/2002 1:11:06 PM, "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com> wrote:
>Google is the semantic web.
>
> http://ftrain.com/google_takes_all.html
>
>
I find this article both interesting, because it does sketch out
a plausible scenario for the SW ... but infuriating because it
blithely assumes that Google pays attention to metadata.
The key to Google's success is that ignores what a page
says it is about (beyond the words themselves, of course)
and uses "observational metadata" based on what others say
about it.
So, what's in it for Google to start caring about
"metacrap" http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm ?
I can believe that it will create its own "observational
ontologies" based on higher level patterns of who says
what about whom, but I doubt if they will start believing
self-descriptions anytime soon.
The other thing I both liked and disliked about the ftrain article
was its treatment of how various vermin (dictators, criminals,
the direct marketing industry) could subvert it for their
own purposes. Compelling examples, but why are they at
the end as an afterthought? These clowns are the reason
that Google ignores metadata in the first place. In order
for Google to take metadata seriously, the roaches will have to
hide out of sight until the semantic web is established, and
then come out of the woodwork and subvert it. The trouble is,
the spammers, pornographers, scam artists, etc. are on the
bleeding edge of e-business (and reputedly the only ones
making money). They're most likely to be early adopters,
webs of trust notwithstanding. Look what Enron did with
"webs of trust" :~(
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