[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
So the PF article only applies to those who open
up to Googling. The incentive to do so is that
some very large majority of people use Google as
their portal to the web; so, the game then becomes
to get people from Google to Reuters whereupon
they are instructed that for them to use Reuters
fully, they pay to play. Ok. Discovery and
service offers. Basic web service.
But anyone who depends on Google to get them
the "best information" for free is fooling
themselves. They will learn.
The troublesome bits are when services need
information but are unwilling or unable to
pay for them, and in fact, may be trying to
get to data that would otherwise be public
record. This is like the case several years
ago when a non-web service controlled practically
all access to government records and made
people pay for access although the information
itself was free.
It's easy to see where this will become bitter.
One wonders if it will evolve as the original
electrical utilities did; originally, they were
private companies, but with the advent of the
TVA, had to face competition from the government
and the subsequent rise of public utilities.
I wonder what kind of taxes people become
willing to endure to ensure that they don't
have to pay for access to their own medical
records? Before anyone gets inflamed, many
public records require fees to see. That
is one task of Dissemination Mgt modules
among others.
Then the next awful thing as we have discussed
before is "googling for government" in which
one has to trust that what others say about them
is accurate because decisions with regards to
ones eligibility for say, health care, become
mediated by those opinions. The health care
provider quits asking on the form "Do You Smoke?"
and instead, asks your acquaintences profiles
about you, checks past photographs, etc.
<LetsGetExtreme>
Information scavenging: one can envision a
day in which there is a profit made for every
fact asserted (say a penny for your thoughts),
and devices sold cheaply for collecting them.
One day one finds oneself making sure that
every hair lost is collected and disposed of
to prevent rogue DNA testers from getting
samples. Some shave themselves completely.
Schools teach people to be very quiet and
use only approved neutral language to keep
the language testers from getting samples.
It becomes quite medieval; when princes had
servants to collect nail clippings so the
local witches couldn't get them.
</LetsGetExtreme>
len
From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@reutershealth.com]
"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" scripsit:
> And the "self-generated" "extremely detailed and comprehensive"
> data is not available to Google?
No. There are no links to it, and even if there were, it requires
password access, which Google does not have.
> Interesting. So, one might generate a lot of RDF to classify
> a resource such that a representation can be chosen, but then
> make that RDF resource itself, a pay to play option. Thus,
> the Semantic Web becomes the upgrade option for a service.
The idea is that:
1) Basic Reuters Health news is available for free on our site,
but if you want it on your site, you must pay.
2) Professional RHI news is available at our site or your site,
but you must pay in either case.
3) Either kind of news is available with subject-matter
classification in RDF format if you want to do your own
classification of it, but then you must pay extra (partly to us,
partly to the people we license our classifications from).
> That might make the web profitable where content has some
> perceived value, and it might get a lot of people to start
> generating more RDF. It will also stratify the web.
Indeed.
> Noting the USENET example that Joshua posted: global
> ontologies work. But shoult the global ontologies themselves
> be free resources even if once applied to a given resource,
> the resources generated by using them might not be.
The top level should certainly be free. The fine-grained 100,000-plus
terms we use, probably not: someone had to work very hard to create and
maintain those.
|
