"The Semantic Web is the path of least resistance"
02.10.2008
WOD-PD keynote speaker Danny Ayers talks about the odds that might prevent the Web from becoming what it should be. As a Semantic Web evangelist and community manager for the Talis Platform, he sees people as a the Web’s key component – but is not surprised that the evangelists themselves often have outdated FOAF-profiles.
Interview
The Web of Data Practitioners Days aim to show how semantic technologies may improve and enhance existing Web-based software systems and how the Web of Data will provide a new paradigm of managing globally interlinked information. The event is going to take place in Vienna, 22-23 October 2008.
Semantic Web Company: Danny, a while ago you published an impressive list of questions which have since sparked an interesting discussion on the blogosphere. I would like to use this interview opportunity to pass the ball back to you and raise some of the issues brought up by you, and at the same time give them a slight bend towards end-users and market observers. But first of all, I would like to start with a rather personal question. If one carried out a social network analysis within the Semantic Web community, you would very probably be one of the most central persons in that network.
From this insider's perspective:
Do you feel that the Semantic Web is already on track? Or where are possible obstacles that could stop it from gaining momentum?
Danny Ayers: I am amused at the suggestion I might be at all central. I will explain why in response to one of your later questions. But I think I can answer this question best starting from a more general perspective. It’s virtually certain the Web will have a future, and given that, we can rephrase the question as: what form will the future Web take?
Looking back a few years, I don’t think many people working on the Web could have predicted the remarkable rise of blogging, the revival of DHTML and ancient Internet Explorer tricks such as Ajax, online social networks, Wikis, the whole Web 2.0 thing. It’s worth noting that these developments have been consistent with Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the Web as a system in which people are the key component.
Shifting to the Semantic Web perspective, for a long time I have believed this approach is on track simply because it offers improvements to the Web for which there are no obvious alternative techniques. Personally, I was relatively late to realise what those improvements really were - moving from a Web of Documents to a more general Web of Data. Expressed like that, and looking at existing Web architecture, the Semantic Web is the path of least resistance.
WOD-PD 2008 | Web of Data Practitioners Days
Vienna, Austria - Oct 22-23, 2008
Invited speakers: Keith Alexander, Sören Auer, Danny Ayers, Richard Cyganiak, Brian Davis, Alan Dix, Yves Raimond, Leo Sauermann, Thomas Schandl, Ansgar Scherp.
Registration on www.webofdata.info
Regarding possible obstacles, there are many ways the Web could suffer, probably most dangerous being interventions from national governments or commercial interests, tilting the table on which we build these systems - such as software patents and threats to net neutrality. The Web works because it’s more or less the same to everyone, everywhere.
For the Semantic Web specifically, issues around data ownership and privacy loom large because few people who are not intimately involved with the technologies - least of all politicians and lawyers - have much clue about the implications of putting data on the Web. We need to take care that the Semantic Web is perceived more as a solution than a problem in this context.
There are plenty of initiatives that on first sight would appear to conflict with the Semantic Web approach, but fortunately the community as whole now has a lot of experience on how to interface with diverse systems as long as they are reasonably compatible with the Web. Natural selection is likely to take care of the rest.
What are projects you are working on at the moment and how do they contribute to reaching maturity level for the Semantic Web?
Danny Ayers: I am afraid I am much better at starting things than finishing them or just discarding them, so I have got dozens of projects half-done. But top of my list recently have been dog food applications*, stuff that I want myself. The main one now is integrating the material I post to Web services - various blogs, Flickr, Twitter etc.
Recently I have been more about scratching itches, reworking things that bother me personally, rather than doing anything that might be immediately useful for anyone else, but I increasingly believe this kind of personal, ad hoc tyre-kicking (i.e. testing the assumptions and infrastructure) is going to throw up issues faster than any pre-planned exercise.
In part because I am on the Talis payroll, but mostly because I think it is the right way to go, I have been building things against the Software as a Service model - let someone else look after the infrastructure (online triple stores etc).
*eds.: A reference to the expression "Eating one's own dog food": "To say that a company "eats its own dog food" means that it uses the products that it makes. For example, Microsoft emphasizes the use of its own software products inside the company. 'Dogfooding' is a means of conveying the company’s confidence in its own products." (Wikipedia)
Some say: "Europeans have developed the Semantic Web and Americans are going to capitalise it." What is your opinion?
Danny Ayers: Six months ago I attended the SemTech conference in San José. There were quite a few European folks with solid projects approaching venture capitalists and vice versa. The impression I got was that of a significant culture clash, with the Europeans generally caught on the wrong-foot.
I have also attended most of the Italian SemWeb conferences (SWAP) and there have seen many demos of potentially lucrative applications, which got forgotten once the presenter gained their doctorate.
At the same time, as far as the (Semantic) Web is concerned, national barriers count for nothing. I live in an 8-cat town in Tuscany and work for a UK company, the US-based company OpenLink has an expert in Outer Siberia.
The use of open data sets in intranet applications is one of the best arguments the semantic web has to offer to the corporate world. But where do ontologies fit in? Where is the benefit for companies?
Danny Ayers: Being pragmatic, I would suggest that in most cases there will be more benefit to be had from reusing data using RDF within the intranet without really thinking about ontologies. The data in corporate databases tends to be associated with specific departments or domains, though for the company’s interest it is better that data can cross arbitrary divisions, that anyone (granted appropriate access rights) can work against the corporate picture, without losing the ability to focus when necessary.
The elevator pitch here might be "let's all share the same spreadsheet". Being able to merge information across in a relatively loose fashion is an immediate win. Or rather, it would be assuming we had better generic user interfaces. Where ontologies come in is the use of hierarchies/taxonomies for personnel, documentation, product descriptions etc which may benefit from a standard, well-tried formalism rather that some local answer.
But there's the bonus down the line of being able to speak to (potential) partners in the same language. If one company wants to sell a commodity to another in the global market, they'll maybe use dollars as the unit, so it automatically makes sense within the spreadsheets. It's a timesaver if they are also able to describe the product in a form that can automatically be understood.
Well-maintained FOAF-files (not just automatically generated ones) could play an essential role in a mature Web. But why is it that even among evangelists not everyone keeps their FOAF-profile up to date?
Danny Ayers: Back to your suggestions of my being near the centre of the SemWeb social net. My own FOAF file is terribly, terribly out of date. I am sure I have more than six friends. But I reckon it’s simply down to tools – you will find most Semantic Web enthusiasts are great at getting ideas to proof-of-concept, then they get distracted :-)
Within a corporate setting Henry Story has been plugging FOAF inside Sun, but it's mostly a one-man project. While I agree with your point on maturity, I don't think you should denigrate automatically generated FOAF files, I would rather have mine appeared automatically.
The problem there is the individual's control of their personal data, especially in the context of all the social network sites around. I believe the Semantic Web community is best informed on what is needed, though strangely a lot of reasonable technical solutions have come from elsewhere - particularly OpenID and OAuth.
About Danny Ayers
Danny Ayers is a software developer and Semantic Web evangelist who also works as a Platform Community Manager for Talis, UK. He describes this position as "perfectly capturing my own ambitions", as he would like to see the potential of the Semantic Web realised sooner rather than later, “but this is dependent on raising awareness in the developer community at large”. He is also an author of technical literature, with some his best-known publications being Beginning RSS and Atom Programming (Wiley & Sons, 2005, with Andrew Watt, and Professional Web 2.0 Programming (Wiley & Sons, 2007, with Eric van der Vlist, Erik Bruchez, Joe Fawcett and Alessandro Vernet.
As a keynote speaker for the Web of Data Practitioners Days, Danny is going to present approaches of involving users and user-communities into the creation of semantic information, for instance using Semantic Wikis.
Danny Ayers' personal website
Talis Platform
Web of Data Practitioners Days
About the Web of Data Practitioners Days in Vienna
The Web of Data Practitioners Days is a new application-oriented event for Semantic Web practitioners and interested newcomers. The Web of Data Practitioners Days aim to communicate the results of the past years' semantic systems activities to a broader audience, especially to practitioners from the industry and academia. In a cooperative effort, four major Austrian institutions, which have actively been conducting research in that area throughout the past years, will set the stage for this event.
Participants are going to have the opportunity to see how semantic technologies may improve and enhance existing Web-based software systems and how the Web of Data will provide a completely new paradigm of managing globally interlinked information. As a result, attendees will have a better understanding of the practical benefits of semantic solutions and researchers obtain valuable feedback for further research directions aiming at productivity and applicability of the existing technology for real-world use cases.