An update for RSS crawlers that don't have synchronization capability etc..

"Reasonable Humans" continue to struggle with the congruency of social-networking and the Semantic Web. Funnily enough, our less capable counterparts (in the reasoning department) don't have such struggles. Here is my little interaction with an IRC Bot called "Phenny" (possibly mother of the Agent Web or Web of Agents or Web 4.0):

kidehen: .w web

phenny: web n. 1: An intricate network suggesting something that was formed by weaving or interweaving
phenny: web n. 2: An intricate trap that entangles or ensnares its victim
phenny: web v. 1: Construct or form a web, as if by weaving.


kidehen: .w network

phenny: network n. 1: An interconnected system of things or people
phenny: network n. 2: (broadcasting) a communication system consisting of a group of broadcasting stations that all transmit the same programs
phenny: network v. 1: Communicate with and within a group.



kidehen: .w social

phenny: social n. 1: A party of people assembled to promote sociability and communal activity
phenny: social a. 1: Relating to human society and its members
phenny: social a. 2: Living together or enjoying life in communities or organized groups.


kidehen: .w semantic

phenny: semantic a. 1: Of or relating to meaning or the study of meaning.


kidehen: .w graph

phenny: graph n. 1: A visual representation of the relations between certain quantities plotted with reference to a set of axes
phenny: graph v. 1: Represent by means of a graph
phenny: graph v. 2: Plot upon a graph.

Note: Wikipedia's Graph definition is the one the applies to RDF :-)

To conclude, the whole Semantic Data Web vision and Open social-networking go hand-in-hand. You can't attain "Open social-networking" without appreciating the underlying core concepts (Structured Data, Graphs, and Triples). There is no way around the reality that all networks are graphs. Of course, this doesn't imply that solution users (end-users) have to master graph theory en route to network participation and exploitation. It simply implies that solution developers need some graph data model appreciation, or a graph data model aware platform, when developing social-networking solutions that seek to leverage the Web.

Funnily enough, my session with the Phenny Bot was triggered by a prior session between Chimezie Ogbuji (who also trains a Bot called "Emeka" that does SPARQL) and said Bot:


chimezie: .w tautology

phenny: tautology n. 1: (logic) a statement that is necessarily true
phenny: tautology n. 2: Useless repetition.


chimezie: .ety tautology

phenny: "1579, from L.L. tautologia 'representation of the same thing' (c.350), from Gk. tautologia, from tautologos 'repeating what has been said,' from tauto 'the same' + -logos 'saying,' related to legein 'to say' (see lecture)." - http://etymonline.com/?term=tautology

That lead me to the following sequence (preceding the initial IRC session dump in this post):

kidehen: .w conflagration

phenny: conflagration n. 1: A very intense and uncontrolled fire.

kidehen: .w imbroglio

phenny: imbroglio n. 1: An intricate and confusing interpersonal or political situation

phenny: imbroglio n. 2: A very embarrassing misunderstanding.


kidehen: .w buzzword

phenny: buzzword n. 1: Stock phrases that have become nonsense through endless repetition.

In sense, proposing the Semantic Data Web as a solution to open social-networiing challenges, more often than not results in your "No Semantic Web here" imbroglio. In a sense, the shortest path to a buzzword fueled conflagration :-)