Semantic Web

We ended our class with a question that has been on my mind lately, “what will the next 5,000 days of the Web bring?” I am sure that it will not be the Web only better. I am confident that there are discoveries and blockbuster applications to come that have not even been considered yet.

I have heard Web 3.0 referenced but I think this dodge. It is easy to say that there will be Web 3.0 because we have placed some definition around Web 2.0. The truth is though, that if you ask 5 people what Web 2.0 means, you’ll get 6 opinions. So, what good is it to predict that we will have Web 3.0.

The term and concept that captures my imagination right now is the Semantic Web. In 1999, Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

For a more current view of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s explanation of the semantic web, check out this BBC interview from July of 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7496000/7496976.stm. What we will achieve is a standard language that allows diverse data sources and objects to interact. So, for example, the day is coming when I will be able to search for all alternative country musicians who live and perform within 100 miles of my home. Rather than performing multiple searches and record keeping, the semantic web will be able to accomplish a task like this in seconds as a matter of routine. I’m looking forward to it.

 

Questions for 8/18

1. The Web now approaches 5,000 days in age. What do you believe the next 5,000 days will be like?
2. What do you see as the greatest challenge to the future of the Internet?
3. What is the most compelling advance that you have seen in the last three months in digital media?

Review of “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It”

In “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It,” published in 2008 by Yale University Press in New Haven and London, Oxford University Professor and co-founder of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Jonathan Zittrain describes the open and generative nature of personal computers and the Internet. He paints the early days of computing and the early days of the network we now call the Web with colorful and playful stories. In reading his first chapters, he made me feel wonderful about being able to say that I was there at the beginning and I remember. Zittrain’s book is a treatise of caution, however. He argues that because the Internet was framed in a spirit of openness and cooperation, an ethic that greatly enhances the generative nature of the technology, there are, as a result, holes and vulnerabilities that lend them to exploitation. Spam, viruses, worms, zombie code, root kits and spyware are just a few examples of the burgeoning security threats that confront information technology and the Internet today. Zittrain argues that if we do not act proactively to curb the impulse to trade security for freedom in response to this proliferation of risk, we might be destined to settle for an information economy that is more industrial than digital in nature.

Kevin Kelly, an editor of Wired Magazine, says in a TED lecture that was recently released to the Web at the following url, http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html, that Wikipedia is something that should be impossible and yet it exists. Kelly goes on to say that the first lesson of the Web is that we have to get better in believing in the impossible. I believe this captures the sense of awe that Zittrain is communicating when he refers to the generative nature of the Internet. It is almost mystical. He refers to the dark matter of the Web. Zittrain dedicates a chapter to Wikipedia in his book. He calls out the three key attributes that spawned Wikipedia.

1.     Verkeersbordvrij: maintain a neutral point of view and all errors can be repaired by reverting to the previous version.

2.     Discussion: every article is accompanied by a discussion page where participants can discuss points of disagreement and come to consensus.

3.     Dedicated core: initially there was a core of dedicated staff, mostly editors, who came from the Nupedia project, the predecessor to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia embodies not only what Zittrain sees as the best of generative technology but he also holds up its approach as a good example of how the future problems of the Internet can be avoided.

Zittrain eschews the prospect of seeking security and risk avoidance in the sterile control of government or in the proprietary rigidity of one or two corporations. This is the future of the Internet that he seeks to stop. He hopes for open and creative solutions that allow for the impossible. He offers suggestions for what these solutions can be.

One of the principles that has made Wikipedia a success is versioning. Whenever an article has been damaged, either through error or by malice, the last know good copy can be restored. The same approach can be taken with PC systems. He calls it the “Red and Green”. A Personal Computer, even one used in a public setting, could have virtual versions, a red version and a green version. The green version has a stricter set of security controls and this is where valuable data and programs could be maintained. The red PC would be the version where more risky and questionable things could be tried. If something went wrong, it could be reset with the push of a button.

Zittrain values the relative lack of central control on the Internet. He believes, however, that we can guard against problems through better informed experiments. This system would take the form of toolkits that would act much like spyware but with the opposite ethos. At the moment someone is deciding whether to run some new software, the toolkit’s connections to other machines could say how many other machines on the Internet were running the code, what proportion of machines of self-described experts were running it, whether those experts had vouched for it, and how long the code had been in the wild.

A chapter is dedicated to strategies for a generative future. Zittrain advocates for maintaining data portability, in other words, our appliances and applications should not be dependent upon the whim or control of one particular entity, company, or government. He argues for network neutrality and for API neutrality, open standards on the network and in applications. He champions maintaining privacy as software becomes a service.  

There is a way for us to keep the wonderfully generative nature of the Internet. It is up to us to act proactively in order to make sure that happens. Zittrain offer a blueprint for making this happen. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to see the next 5,000 days of the Web to be as amazing as the first 5,000 days.

 

The joy of the Web

I miss the old days of usenet before the Web. Oh, I know it is still there but it just isn’t the same. It has essentially become Google Groups. Howard Rheingold mentioned the good old days. I even remember the week that AOL opened the flood gates. That was fun.

Howard did get me thinking again about community and the internet. People, no longer restricted from having a conversation with others by place or time, can form bonds, find controversy, debate, argue, lurk and troll. We talk about it all of the time in MCDM but sometimes I forget just what a wonder it is. Now I take it for granted that it is always there. Not just the usenet but all of the different communities that have formed. Whole cultures have grown online. I’m simply feeling good that Howard was able to re-ignite my joy about this amazing machine.

It’s actually twice that it happened in the same week. One of Howard’s peers, Kevin Kelly, delivered a TED talk last year that was just recently publshed. It was just released last week. It is well worth the twenty minutes. Highly recommend watching it. He talks about what he believes the next 5,000 days of the internet will be. That in itself is a worthy discussion. But like Howard Rheingold, Kevin Kelly was able to awaken my sense of wonder at joy at being able to witness the birth of this wonderful machine, the Web. Kelly captures my sentiment in his talk when he says that it is amazing but what is truly amazing is that we are not amazed.

Questions for Howard Rheingold

1) Can you share some thoughts on Lawrence Lessig’s Change Congress initiative and what you think the potential impact for a movement like this can be?
2) How can we place value on reputation and recognition on the internet that approximates the way we value other things with money? Is that possible?
3) In hosting an online conversaton, how do you deal with a troll who seems to have only disruption as their goal?

Review of The Wealth of Networks

In “The Wealth of Networks,” published in 2006 Yale University Press, Harvard Professor Yochai Benkler describes a new model of economic production that he calls the networked information economy. He maintains that the declining price of computation, communication, and storage have placed the material means of information and cultural production in the hands of a significant fraction of the world’s population – on the order of a billion people around the world. Benkler breaks his study of the networked information economy into four areas:

1. Analysis of the role of technology.
2. Analysis of the effects of networked information economy on individual autonomy.
3. Examination of the shift from the mass-mediated public sphere to a public mediated sphere.
4. Emphasis and discussion of individual action in non-market actions.

The signs are all around us. Newspaper revenues are on the decline and some have predicted the demise of the fourth estate as we know it. Book publishers caste about in search of a new model. Benkler’s own publication is printed by Yale University Press but is also available on his Web site for free download under Creative Commons license. The entertainment industry is undergoing major transformation. It is no longer necessary to distribute music or movies on rivalrous media. The digits of computing have made non-rivalrous options available. The opportunities to share, mix, and re-use content abound. The power to produce compelling content that can be shared widely is now in the hands of the individual. Enterprise level software is produced by volunteers. This is software that legitimately competes with industry giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle. Benkler offers a powerful and persuasive argument for an economic model that explains this profound shift in the way that a significant portion of humankind communicates and the economics of that shift. He calls upon powerful examples of social production that have arisen in the first 5,000 days of the World Wide Web:

• Wikipedia
• Seti@home
• Linux
• Slashdot
• Google

In the old industrial information network, the cost to enter the market was prohibitive. Large and expensive presses were needed to produce printed mass media. For entertainment, expensive cameras, recording devices and studios were required. Broadcast media required access to one of only a few channels available and then millions of dollars in equipment and staff to maintain a network. The motivation for engaging in these enterprises could really only be one thing, revenue. Now, anyone with an $800 computer, a broadband connection, some software, and a little talent can reach millions of people. Money is no longer the only reason for participating in content production. People engage for a variety of reasons, for example, status, reputation, community, truth or fun. The ninth largest Web site in the world, Wikipedia is produced almost entirely by volunteers. Today everyone is a content producer. Very few cell phones come without cameras. Blogs, wikis, forums, and social networking site gives anyone with a connection to the network an opportunity to contribute.

Benkler’s arguments find their roots in the free software movement and the hacker ethic. Benkler argues strongly for setting information free and enabling wherever possible, the ability for people to share and collaborate. He argues that government’s role, particularly in North America and Europe, has been heavy handed on the side of the status quo. At times, there is a temptation for me to step back from Benkler’s arguments and wonder if he is just another wild eyed academic liberal who has lost touch with the world in a finely feathered nest called tenure. Under analysis, however, I feel that his arguments hold. Due to technology the way that people communicate has changed. It is a change that is on the scale of the alphabet or the printing press. It has happened and it is undeniable. His perspective on this shift is undeniably liberal. I would be interested in reading a conservative companion piece to balance his view but to date, I am aware of no equal.

I highly recommend The Wealth of Networks to anyone who wants to understand the economics of the internet and digital media. If you have time to read one book on this subject, this is the one to pick. It can be dense. It can be challenging. This is not a book that you will breeze through in a weekend. Rather, it is thought provoking and can inspire contemplation and further investigation. In my opinion there is no higher praise for a book. I predict that this is a book that you will reference time and time again.

Putting the digits in the economics of media

The cover of “Media Economics” intimates that the book relates to the application of new and traditional media. In my opinion, they’re a little light on the new media. In fairness, the book was published in 2004 and that can be an eternity in the digital era. I mention this because chapter 11 is almost laughable in its coverage of advertising. We now know that a banner ad on a Web site carries about as much value as a sign at a bus stop. We cannot consider these in the same context as advertisements in a newspaper, magazine, or on broadcast media. Hundreds or thousands of eyes might brush by these signposts at the virtual roadside but they simply blend with the scenery as we pass by on our way to do something else.

What is an advertisement worth on a page that costs the viewer nothing to see? Companies like Google and Doubleclick have done a great job of providing ads in context with the search that is being done by the reader. This appears to help. If the viewer finds what they are looking for, an ad will often serve as well as any other form of information. In some cases it is exactly what the person is searching for. Even then the revenue does not compare to what could have been realized in traditional media. So, what is the answer? I’m not sure yet but it seems pretty clear to me that Hoskins,  McFayden, and Finn are due for a refresh on their book.  

   

 

– Mark 

 

 

Tapping the Turk

I have $200.00 burning a hole in my pocket. Once it occurred to me that I could get 10,000 people to do something as inane as draw a sheep for me for the low, low price of .02 cents per sheep, my week has not been the same. It just seems like too much fun. But what will it be?

·         Draw something that starts with the letter A, the letter B, the letter C….through to Z times 200.

·         Send a picture of what is under the cushions of your couch.

·         Read a sonnet and send the recording as a wav file.

·         A penny for your thoughts times 20,000.

·         Draw the man in the moon

·         Tell me where to take my next vacation

Why does this appeal to me? I really don’t know but it seems to be a collective piece of art. It is a gestalt exercise. A collection of similar acts by many different people fires my imagination. This is one of the things that I love more than anything else about the internet, its generative nature. In its randomness, from its serendipitous goofiness, comes remarkable creativity. In it I can see reflections of the human spirit. This for me is like the ability to create my own little flash mob experience for a few dollars.  The Amazon Mechanical Turk will have me scheming for some days to come. Once I strike upon the ideal bit of fun, I’ll share it here. Of course, I’ll give you a chance to earn your own two cents.

Information Should Be Free (ISBF)

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:–
We murder to dissect.

Taken from “The Tables Turned, An Evening Scene On The Same Subject”, a poem by William Wordsworth.

In his paper, “Information and Intellectual Property Protection: Evaluating the Claim that Information Should be Free”, Kenneth E. Himma, Ph.D., J.D. from Seattle Pacific University argues that the most charitable interpretation of the claim that information should be free (ISBF) lacks adequate support in mainstream moral views and thus cannot ground a wholesale challenge to the legitimacy of intellectual property rights.

I feel that Dr. Himma does not make his case. He fails to frame the ISBF claim in the context and spirit that it is offered. ISBF is a guiding principle of the hacker ethic which was first described by Steven Levy in his book, “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution”. This work has been followed by many others that build upon and foster this set of ethical guidelines. I don’t expect that Himma has a responsibility to argue for those who would argue against him. I do believe he does an injustice to his thesis by taking one principle from an entire code of ethics and examining it outside of its contextual framework.

Himma creates a straw man by focusing his argument upon whether the government has a right to enforce and regulate intellectual property. He would have us believe that those who argue for ISBF are only seeking anarchy. According to Levy’s work, the general tenets of the hacker ethic also include:

·         Sharing

·         Openness

·         Decentralization

·         Free access to computers

·         World improvement

I believe that Levy is advocating for these tenets to begin with the creator and not to even involve government. I do not think that Levy or those who followed him would hold that there is no place for any regulation. The claim is not that information must be free but that it should be free. This leaves open the possibility that there are conditions where information should be free but it is not practical or prudent for it to be free. Privacy is an example of where certain regulations may be reasonable. Himma offers this as an example of where ISBF fails. Again, I think it is a straw man and does not do anything to refute the strong but conditional claim of the hacker ethic that information should be free.

Weekly reflecton

Wishpot (http://www.wishpot.com) was my Web 2.0 find of the week. I like the idea that the recommendation engine drives me to other things that I might not otherwise consider. This is not a new idea. This recommendation filtering is, in my opinion, the true factor of genius behind Netflix (http://www.netflix.com). I generally know what’s hot. I know what the current hits are. What I enjoy is being reminded about the things I have forgotten or being pointed to new things that I have not yet considered. Anderson speaks to this in The Long Tail.

It’s not that I don’t like hits. I do. I like other things too. It is in those niches that are peculiar to me that I find the real gems. The interesting thing about Wishpot is that there is an element of social networking added to the mix. In the way that I express my preferences, I am grouped with others who haunt the same niches that I do. I get pointers to what baubles are on their wish list, the toys and tools of people bent in a similar to me. It’s scary but true…and fun.

I enjoyed T.A.’s presentation. I don’t think that Minebox is something that I would use but then, I am not in the group of people he was focused upon either. I am an early adopter but not an innovator. It seems to me, based upon his description, that T.A. is most focused on those people who fall within the innovator portion of the diffusion of innovations bell curve.