{"id":205,"date":"2003-11-07T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-08T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/wp\/?p=108"},"modified":"2003-11-07T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-08T01:26:00","slug":"shirky-on-the-semantic-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/2003\/11\/shirky-on-the-semantic-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Shirky on the Semantic Web"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here I was, working on a rambling retort to Clay, when Sam nails it;<\/p>\n\n<blockquote>\nTwo parts brilliance, one part strawman.  Pity, actually, as I am sympathetic with the point that Clay is trying to make.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Rest assured, this &#8220;problem&#8221; isn&#8217;t unknown to Semantic Web folk.  It&#8217;s actually an\nofficial <a href=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2001\/tag\/issues.html#rdfURIMeaning-39\">TAG issue<\/a>,\ngoes by the moniker &#8220;public meaning&#8221;, and has its very own\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lists.w3.org\/Archives\/Public\/public-sw-meaning\/\">task force<\/a>\nto tackle it (and unlike other task forces, they&#8217;re actually making progress!).<\/p>\n\n<p>FWIW, my view (<a href=\"http:\/\/lists.w3.org\/Archives\/Public\/public-sw-meaning\/2003Sep\/0042.html\">explained partially here<\/a>)\nis that although this is another one of those\n<a href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com\/techrep\/1994\/abstract-29.html\">unmaskable problems in distributed systems<\/a>,\nthat doesn&#8217;t mean there&#8217;s not a way forward.<\/p>\n\n<p>Consider the HTTP 404 response code.  I see it as a boundary case of the public meaning\nissue, where ambiguity is maximized due to having <em>no<\/em> available information from\nwhich to infer meaning, leaving public meaning to be determined solely by use, just as with\nClay&#8217;s &#8220;People&#8221; example.  But did the Web stop working because of 404?  Of course not.\n404 is a feature, not a bug, as Clay himself\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.xent.com\/pipermail\/fork\/2001-June\/000803.html\">observed<\/a>.\nThe Web works &#8220;despite&#8221; 404, because there&#8217;s <em>public value in not using it<\/em>, just\nas there&#8217;s public value in being as unambiguous about URI semantics as need be.<\/p>\n\n<p>Will there be ambiguity on the Semantic Web?  Of course.  You still get 404s, right?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here I was, working on a rambling retort to Clay, when Sam nails it; Two parts brilliance, one part strawman. Pity, actually, as I am sympathetic with the point that Clay is trying to make. Rest assured, this &#8220;problem&#8221; isn&#8217;t unknown to Semantic Web folk. It&#8217;s actually an official TAG issue, goes by the moniker [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}