{"id":108,"date":"2009-10-29T06:32:36","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T11:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haleyai.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/29\/sir-tim-berners-lee-on-ontology\/"},"modified":"2018-07-23T09:26:20","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T14:26:20","slug":"sir-tim-berners-lee-on-ontology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/haleyai.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/29\/sir-tim-berners-lee-on-ontology\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Tim Berners-Lee on Ontology"},"content":{"rendered":"

A panel on whether or not ontology is needed to achieve a collective vision for the semantic web was held on Tuesday at the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2009) near Washington, DC.\u00a0 For most of the panelists the question was rhetorical.\u00a0 But there were a few interesting points made, including that machine learning of ontology is one extreme of a spectrum that extends to human authoring of ontology (however authoritative or coordinated).\u00a0 Nobody on the panel or in the audience felt that the extreme of human authored ontology was viable for the long-term vision of a comprehensively semantic and intelligent web.\u00a0 It was clear that the panelists believed that machine learning of ontology will substantially enrich and automate ontology construction, although the timeframe was not discussed.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the subjective opinion that substantial ontology will be acquired automatically within the next decade or so was clear.\u00a0 There was much discussion about the knowledge being in the data and so on.\u00a0 The discussion had a bit of the statistics versus logic debate to it.\u00a0 Generally, the attitude was “get over it” and even Pat Hayes, who gave a well-received talk on Blogic<\/a> and whom one would expect to take the strict logic side of the argument, pointed out seminal work on combining machine learning and logic in natural language understanding of text.<\/p>\n

David Karger of MIT’s AI lab<\/a> challenged the panel from the audience by asserting that the data people posted on the web is much more important than any ontology that might define what that data means.\u00a0 This set off a bit of a firestorm.\u00a0 There was consensus that data itself is critically important, if not central.\u00a0 For the most part, panelists were aghast at the notion that spreadsheets of data would be useless to computers unless the meaning of its headings, for example, were related to concepts defined by reference to ontology those computers understood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With respectful deference, the panel and audience yielded.\u00a0 Sir Tim Berners-Lee took the floor.<\/p>\n

The issue of semantics briefly faded from the discussion.\u00a0 Utility seemed to be the crux of the matter.\u00a0 Sir Tim illustrated how even the smallest bit of semantics (i.e., meaning by reference) added to a spreadsheet allowed others to quickly and incrementally, almost continuously add value to published data.\u00a0 He did this by way of example, discussing mash-ups of bicycle accident, traffic, and map data by different people over the course of a day or so after someone first published the bicycle accident data.\u00a0 Most interesting to me, however, was his concluding point: simply identifying what something is by reference to an existing semantic web concept makes data much more immediately consumable, useful and valuable.\u00a0 For example, simply identifying that a column is a longitude using RDF<\/a> adds a lot of value.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, I realize mash-ups are old, and linked data is well known, but his point was delivered in such a straightforward and compelling manner that the argument simply passed.\u00a0 He put\u00a0 a lot of experts eyes back on the ball.<\/p>\n

Sir Tim reiterated this point an hour or so later at a meet-up of meet-ups.\u00a0 His consistent, critical point was that lightweight use of ontology realizes a great deal of value.\u00a0 Simply using RDF to anchor the semantics of linked data, without substantial ontology development, makes data much more useful to humans.\u00a0 And with regard to enterprises, he discussed how eleven (yes, he said 11) different concepts are enough to address most of the semantic needs of various enterprises (i.e., their relational database models).\u00a0 Of course, they will receive more value from reusing existing ontology, extended according to their needs.\u00a0 His point was that the small step of simply linking data with open web semantics using only the most widely adopted RDF identifiers is a huge step forward for the semantic web and the benefits its technologies can bring to individuals and enterprises.\u00a0 Full-fledged ontology is important for deeper functionality and long-term visions, but simply using concepts from existing ontology can be a huge step forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A panel on whether or not ontology is needed to achieve a collective vision for the semantic web was held on Tuesday at the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2009) near Washington, DC.\u00a0 For most of the panelists the question was rhetorical.\u00a0 But there were a few interesting points made, including that machine learning of … <\/p>\n

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