The Trouble with Labels

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Kingsley Uyi Idehen

Lexington, United States

FOAF

Unfortunately our fixation with "Labels" and the artificial link that exist between "Labels" and so-called "first mover advantage" continue to impede our progress to clarity about matters such as a fully functional Web of interlinked data.

A while back I watched Kevin Kelly's 5,000 days presentation at TED. During the presentation, I kept on scratching my head, wondering why phrases like "Linked Data", "Semantic Web", "Web of Data", "Data Web" where so unnaturally disconnected from his session narrative.

Yesterday I watched IMINDI's TechCrunch 50 presentation, and once again I saw the aforementioned pattern repeat itself. This time around, the poor founders of this "Linked Data Web" oriented company (which is what they are in reality) took a totally undeserved pasting from a bunch of panelist incapable of seeing beyond today (Web 2.0) and yesterday (initial Web bootstrap).

Anyway, thanks to the Web, this post will make a small contribution towards re-connecting the missing phrases to these "Linked Data Web" presentations.

Comments

Re:The Trouble with Labels

Dear Kingsley,

I think you are perfectly right. The idea of Linked Data is still sort of beyond regular people's mind. In some sense, the Web is in a process of decomposition. The average size of linked pieces is getting to be smaller and smaller. In the other words, the linked units on the Web is gradually changing from page-size to paragraph-size, and eventually to data-size. It is happening while many people still are not able to well connect their work to this happening history.

On the other hand, I believe that the Semantic-Web approach you are working on and the imindi mind map approach represent two different but complementary side of the linked data progress. In essence, the Semantic-Web approach you represent is to construct an objective linked data web by digging the facts already existed on the Web while Adam Lindemann's imindi approach is to construct a subjective linked data web by encouraging people connecting their thoughts without any restriction of formal scheme. I can see that if the two approaches can somehow be connected, it would be a really wonderful picture of a great web of linked data.

I have forwarded the link of your post to the imindi co-founders. Look forward to seeing how you guys might figure out some way collaborate your products.

best,

Yihong

Posted by Yihong Ding on 09/12/2008 10:54 GMT-0500

Re:The Trouble with Labels

Yihong,

My vision of the "Linked Data Web" is a little broader than you articulate above. It is about exploiting the annotative effects of Web 2.0 style tools such as Blogs (and comments), Wikis (and talk pages), Shared Bookmarks, Feed Subscriptions, Discussion Forums etc., as discourse construction, discovery, and participation tools, but with the added benefits of structured and interlinked data from these realms (which is missing most of the time today).

Our ODS product has a "Conversation" feature associated with all Data Spaces such that all conversations in a given data space end up being part of a broader structured conversation space associated with structured data entities (a Linked Data graph for discourse).

IMINDI is making connections with "What" instead of making connections solely with "Who". This is basically what we believe in also, and the core of ODS is about just this.

But beyond IMINDI and ODS, what you really come back to is the very essence of the "Semantic Web" vision. The vision that TimBL had is exactly the same.

This is why I am gripping about labels in this post :-)

Posted by Kingsley Idehen on 09/12/2008 11:24 GMT-0500

Re:The Trouble with Labels

Thank you, Kingley. Actually, I found that our vision is amazingly coherently. In fact, I had suggest almost identical vision of linking not only data but also all kinds of services as well through their linked mind network. I guess we might figuring out some time discussing about it as well.

cheers,

yihong

Kingsley Idehen wrote:
Yihong,

IMINDI is making connections with "What" instead of making connections solely with "Who". This is basically what we believe in also, and the core of ODS is about just this.

But beyond IMINDI and ODS, what you really come back to is the very essence of the "Semantic Web" vision. The vision that TimBL had is exactly the same.

This is why I am gripping about labels in this post :-)

Posted by Yihong Ding on 09/12/2008 16:40 GMT-0500

Re:The Trouble with Labels

Yihong,

We certainly need to make time to talk, I our view are very much in sync :-)

You can ping me (skype, email, tweeter etc.) re. chat.

Kingsley

Posted by Kingsley Uyi Idehen on 09/12/2008 17:57 GMT-0500

Re:The Trouble with Labels

this was the first time i had concretely seen the limits of vision in silicon valley heroes .. which has value because it lets us know they are entrenched, and soon to be fossilized ...

as to what imindi is and can do, i have some philosophical thoughts and will see if using it substantiates them...

but the buddhist no-mind doesn't need it, i suspect.

enjoy, gregory lent

Posted by gregorylent on 09/14/2008 19:05 GMT-0500

Re:The Trouble with Labels

Hi Kingsley,

I am a big supporter of linked data and the semantic web but this is not what Imindi is about. TBL`s dream was to help machines to be able to read and understand the data on the web. That is what RDF, OWL etc are all about really. Infact in truth the semantic web is really just the dreams of the AI guys of the 1980s clothed in newer clothes. Again, there is nothing wrong with these dreams but Imindi is not approching the world from this perspective we are on a completely different path. The path we are on is one of human intelligence augmentation or basically making humans smarter both individually and collectively. Such pioneers as Vannever Bush, Douglas Englebart, Alan Kay have all walked before us on this path. Essentially, Imindi is not based on the TBL`s vision of the semantic web, but Vannever Bush`s vision of the Memex in his 1945 article "As we may Think."

Posted by Adam Lindemann on 09/16/2008 09:13 GMT-0500

Re:The Trouble with Labels

Adam Lindemann wrote:

<<<
Hi Kingsley,

I am a big supporter of linked data and the semantic web but this is not what Imindi is about. TBL`s dream was to help machines to be able to read and understand the data on the web. That is what RDF, OWL etc are all about really. Infact in truth the semantic web is really just the dreams of the AI guys of the 1980s clothed in newer clothes. Again, there is nothing wrong with these dreams but Imindi is not approching the world from this perspective we are on a completely different path. The path we are on is one of human intelligence augmentation or basically making humans smarter both individually and collectively. Such pioneers as Vannever Bush, Douglas Englebart, Alan Kay have all walked before us on this path. Essentially, Imindi is not based on the TBL`s vision of the semantic web, but Vannever Bush`s vision of the Memex in his 1945 article "As we may Think."
>>

Adam,

Thanks for your response, very much appreciated as this is a very important matter, really.

If you assume the "Semantic Web" vision as espoused by TimBL is about AI then your assumptions about incongruence are accurate. Unfortunately, the "Semantic Web" vision was never about AI (solely), it just so happened that AI folks jumped on it. Ironically, the same thing happened re. the "Document Web" aspect of the Web which endeared itself the content producers and graphics designer community etc..

The recent emergence of the "Linked Data" meme is basically about pulling back from the totally misunderstood "Semantic Web" vision with short-term focus on the evolution of the current Web into a mesh of structured and interlinked data.

When you refer to the visions of Vannever Bush, Douglas Englebart, and Alan Kay as incongruent with those of TimBL we automatically contruct a direct path to the title of my post: The Problem with Labels :-)

btw - Vannever Bush, Douglas Englebart, Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, Paul Otlet, and TimBL are all fundamentally hoovering around the same core concept using different labels.

IMINDI is about persistence of thought via a medium with varying degress of accessibility along data access scope vectors that could incudes friends, familys, colleagues etc.. I would like to believe that your data is structured, honors the concept of identity, and is Web architecture based. In my eyes you are contructing a Web of Linked Data emanating from human thought routed through the tools humans use to express thought e.g. Blogs, Wikis, Discussions, Comments, Polls, Shared Bookmarks etc..

Kingsley

Posted by Kingsley Uyi Idehen on 09/16/2008 10:07 GMT-0500

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