Semantic Web

Drupal is a content management system that is free and open source. It allows you to build and configure complex and multi-faceted websites without first learning how to code or program. A new version, Drupal 7, is due for wide release very shortly. The system itself is stable and is in use on some major sites such as Examiner.com. However, there are still some bugs in the upgrade process which are awaiting resolution.

Lin Clark majored in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon University and is engaged in her Master’s program at DERI, NUI Galway in Galway, Ireland. Her thesis is entitled “Semantic Web Technologies and Content Management Systems”. For those interested in working with Drupal or who are just starting out, she has made a series of video tutorials which can be found on YouTube and at semantic-drupal.com.

In the first part of our interview with Nova Spivack, we talked about the struggle for dominance between Facebook, Google and Microsoft. In the second part, we discuss the current state of Semantic Web technology. Nova started Twine with the intention of it being the first consumer Semantic Web application.

Semantic Web technologies hold the promise of delivering a web of Linked Data where information is understandable to computers. So rather than simply moving data around, machines can derive meaning from the requests made of them, and return searches and so on that are more relevant to us than what we are used to at present.

Nova claims that Twine had potential, “The next version, had we been allowed to finish it, would have been a candidate for a killer app. It would have provided a social plus semantic search engine. Basically, the kind of thing that Facebook will probably build in the future.

I keep hearing the term Linked Data, but what does it mean?

More or less what it says. All the data on the Internet linked together.

And that is important to me because…?

Your company, like everyone else’s company has a number of separate processes going. Accounts, marketing, HR, government compliances, legal issues, transport considerations. The information that pertains to each process is stored for convenience in separate databases. These databases are associated with the various applications that are used to create them. SAP for accounts, various spreadsheet formats, and document pages.

All contain information vital to the running of your company. All contain information which is mutually inaccessible to each other.

It has worked so far because we have had the human workaround. If a report has to be written for the quarterly board meeting, then someone has to get the information from each of these ‘data silos’ separately and spend a goodly amount of time and energy on finessing the disparate contents into something understandable and useful to act as a basis for a fruitful discussion.

With Linked Data technology running on your system, you ask your system for the information you want in the format you want. The computer itself works out what is relevant and useful. Linked Data enables the various databases to talk to each other and work out what is needed.

In normal circumstances, I have the highest regard for Clay Shirky. A copy of his book "Here Comes Everybody" is making its way to my great delight to the top of my reading stack. His talk at the London School of Economics is a classic lesson in presentation and delivery.

However, his article on the Semantic Web is a bit of a shocker. He begins the the article asking "What is the Semantic Web good for?", a phrasing strongly reminiscent of Edwin Starr asking "War: what is it good for?" which of course demands the response “Absolutely nothing.”

To save us all from chanting in unison he provides us with his own answer. "The Semantic Web is a machine for creating syllogisms." Even for 2003, when his article was written, that wasn't true. The stated aim has always been to make information more relevant by making it more meaningful and more accessible.

All the information in the world and beyond falls into one of three categories.

• What we know
• What we know we don't know
• What we don't we don't know

  Sounds very much like the poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, but the idea of separated knowledge predates him all the way back to the time of Plato's Dialogues. When it comes to the news - the information updates that inform our knowledge of the world and our specific interests - there are two other conditions to take into consideration: the expected and the unexpected.

  Expected news is the regular features and updates that we get from feature writers, blogs that share our views, and is largely a comforting place to be: something new to consider on a regular basis but in a familiar continuum of form and style. Updates aren't really more news, but just more information on a topic. Our knowledge is expanded in a staged manner, a bit like taking a walk along an unfamiliar path in a familiar piece of countryside.