Ironick

The Battle Between the Two Gods of Hypermedia: The Reader and The Writer

[This is a continuation of a discussion of the “shape of the web” that started in Twitter and then moved to Richard Veryard’s blog: What shape is the Internet.]

Glad we agree on the 1st point. On the 2nd point, I'm not sure Tim's vision of hypermedia was all that "innocent".

I think both Tim Berners-Lee, and Ted Nelson before him, understood that "hypermedia" implied not only following links to go from media to media, but also that such media would be (mis)interpreted, copied, rearranged, (mis)used, mashed up, etc.

In a speech from 2005, Tim presents a slide entitled "The two gods of literature", which goes as follows:

[begin slide]

according to Ted Nelson

* The Writer

* The Reader

A common benefit, overlap of need.--but a battle.

[end slide]

A bit cryptic, so I searched(!) for any discussion of the two gods by Ted. The only discussion that I could find is in this BBC interview: “I think of it as a form of writing - and writing is essentially what I would call a two-God system, because God the author proposes and God the reader disposes. The author is completely free to do anything on the page that he likes.” (I would have said “to the page”.)

I can’t be sure, but I think Ted (and Tim perhaps to a lesser degree) WERE plugged into the more general concept of intertextuality: “the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another.” ( ). For a good discussion of intertextuality (if you like semiotics and literary theory), see this article.

What I think both are alluding to with the metaphor of “two gods”, the reader and the writer, is the idea that “hypertextuality increases intertextuality”: hypertext increases the (mis)use of text (really all media) by users (readers) in ways unforeseen (and often unapproved) by producers (authors). So I think both Tim and Ted are completely unsurprised (but not unconcerned) with how the web of hypermedia is (mis)used in ever more sophisticated ways. It is not just any battle, it is a Red Queen arms race among readers and writers!

The web of linked media enables easier exploration and exploitation of that media.

[The very movement of this discussion from twitter to blog to blog is a perfect example of the intertextual battle. As is my use of a link shortening service…]

History of the Semantic Web

I didn't see much in the way of a Semantic Web timeline when I went looking today (though see the timeline in this presentation). So I am posting the redacted IM transcript of a colleague's and my discussion of key resources and dates concerning the Semantic Web. These should be useful to anyone interested in creating such a timeline:

[12:07] NicholasGall: btw, TBL 1st used "Semantic Web" at the 1st WWW COnf in 1994

[12:08] NicholasGall: http://www.w3.org/Talks/WWW94Tim/Overview.html

[12:08] Colleague: ok.  any idea when it was "launched" more officially with the stack diagram i showed?

[12:08] Colleague: when a working group established?

[12:08] NicholasGall: but work didn't really get going until 99 with the first RDF specs

[12:09] NicholasGall: http://www.w3.org/1999/11/11-WWWProposal/

[12:11] NicholasGall: actually the RDF working group formed in 1997:http://www.irt.org/articles/js086/index.htm

[12:12] NicholasGall: it grew out of the metadata wars already underway between Netscape and MSFT and it was a successor to PICS

[12:13] NicholasGall: interesting that RDF began as a follow on to a quasi "html microformat": PICS

[12:14] Colleague: whatwould you say if I used the scientific america article by TBL in 2001as the "launch" of the big semantic web vision. Say that this is whenit became more public and visible.

[12:15] NicholasGall: yeah, 2001 sounds about right; I'll look at little further to see if anything major was announced in 2000

[12:28] Colleague: check this out:  http://www.w3.org/2001/12/semweb-fin/w3csw

[12:29] Colleague: asfar as i can tell this is the firt publication of the vision stack Ihave in my presentation ... and it includes a good summary of semanticweb principles.

[12:36] NicholasGall: yes its good. but it led me to a pitch by tim on 12/06/2000 with the stack:http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1206-xml2k-tbl/slide1-0.html

[12:38] Colleague: yea.  i'm digging too.  didn't get to that one

[12:39] Colleague: but interestingly i have found that the pages on the working groups have all the info needed on when started, recc status, etc.

[12:39] NicholasGall: for the specs, yes.

[12:39] Colleague: OWL for examle started Nov 1 2001, had a candidate recc aug 19 2003, and became a formal recc on feb 10 2004

[12:40] NicholasGall: here's perhaps tbl's earliest design note on it (09/98):http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html

[12:55] NicholasGall: i think it's fair to say that the SW was fully launched in 2001: see this list of SW pitches since 2000:http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/EO/talks

Technorati Tags     Web,history,W3C,Semantic

Semantic HTML: A Stepping Stone From the GUI Web to the Semantic Web

Another example of web serendipity. I have a Google Alert set for the search term ["semantic web" microformats], which today led me to Davyd's blog post, which had this comment from loic: "microformats are evil. you should use RDFA!" A quick search for RDFA using Google and viola(!)--I discover a couple of new approaches (besides the groundbreaking microformats) to what is currently being referred  to as Semantic HTML.

Benjamin Nowak has a good list of the current approaches to Semantic HTML: microformats, Structured Blogging, RDFa (the "a" stands for "attributes"), and eRDF (the "e" stands for "embedded").

What I find most promising is the general consensus that the best approach to moving from the "GUI Web" to the "Semantic Web" is to provide a simple stepping stone for semantically annotating the existing "GUI HTML"; thereby transforming it into "Semantic HTML". And a little healthy competition among the various approaches should make the converged solution all the better.

Now all we have to do is to make sure the developers being enticed by GUI-centric RIA approaches like Ajax, XAML, Flash/Flex, etc., don't forget to ensure that their slick GUI interfaces are not only user accessible, but semantically accessible.

Technorati Tags     web,semantic,microformats,RDFa,eRDF,serendipity

The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview.

A colleague sent me Shirky's rant on the W3C Semantic Web Activity, and I gotta say I agree with his conclusion wholeheartedly:

Much of the proposed value of the Semantic Web is coming, but it is not coming because of the Semantic Web. The amount of meta-data we generate is increasing dramatically, and it is being exposed for consumption by machines as well as, or instead of, people. But it is being designed a bit at a time, out of self-interest and without regard for global ontology. It is also being adopted piecemeal, and it will bring with it with all the incompatibilities and complexities that implies. There are significant disadvantages to this process relative to the shining vision of the Semantic Web, but the big advantage of this bottom-up design and adoption is that it is actually working now.

I also love his observation of what I would call the "Version 2.0 Syndrome" (in which the second version of a wildly successful new product is bloated, complex, expensive, therefore a failure, because the designer of the original product tried to improve it in every way):

This, of course, is the standard Hail Mary play for anyone whose technology is caught on the wrong side of complexity. People pushing such technologies often make the "gateway drug" claim that rapid adoption of simple technologies is a precursor to later adoption of much more complex ones. Lotus claimed that simple internet email would eventually leave people clamoring for the more sophisticated features of CC:Mail (RIP), PointCast (also RIP) tried to label email a "push" technology so they would look like a next-generation tool rather than a dead-end, and so on.

Unfortunately, I think Tim Berners-Lee (and the W3C) is somewhat bogged down in his own "Web version 2.0" quagmire: The Semantic Web. He created this wildly successful thing called the Web by creating something simple, easy to adopt, and flexible. Yet most of what the W3C has done since then seems complex, hard to adopt, and inflexible. Actually, this is possibly his second V2 ballyhoo, since he was involved in or at least promoted HTTP-NG (for Next Generation)--the aborted attempt to turn HTTP into an distributed OO protocol. Web services is succeeding where HTTP-NG failed. And something I haven't seen yet will succeed where W3C's Semantic Web fails.