Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#31

Post by naasking » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:18 PM UTC

drcode wrote: post #25

I think the main issue is that even though "knowledge representation" with ontologies is an enticing goal, it's simply a fact that real entities, as used by humans at a practical level, don't map neatly onto mathematically-sound hierarchies.. . To see this, just look at the arguments the ancient Greeks already had as to whether a human is a "two-legged featherless animal" or the endless online arguments as to whether…

> don't map neatly onto mathematically-sound hierarchies.

I think they do, but finding the right mathematical model is very difficult. If it were easy, everyone would be a mathematics PhD.

Learning to program is becoming efficient at recognizing the right spherical cow in any given situation, because such shortcuts are essential to getting shit done.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#32

Post by ZenoArrow » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:19 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #4

It was a solution looking for a problem.

Hardly. The promise is still there, but there are barriers in place to get there.

One of the most useful aspects of the semantic web is how it enhances the search for information. Some web citizens have become conditioned to see Google as the pinnacle of what we can achieve through search, but we can do a lot better. Let's use an example to illustrate this. Imagine a presidential election was taking place and you want to understand the positions of the candidates on topics that matter to you. Let's say foreign policy was something you were interested in, including their proclivity for war. By allowing for searching on a richer set of metadata you can more easily access the information about the positions of these candidates, without the distortions of Google's page rank algorithms. Think of it like treating the information of the web as a database you can query more directly. That's the main promise of the semantic web.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#33

Post by ghaff » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:27 PM UTC

It was the sort of largely academic tops-down exercise to organizing information that has mostly lost out time and time again to more organic bottoms-up/self-organizing approaches. Think Yahoo vs. Google. [ADDED: i.e. manually populating hierarchies vs. search, in case that wasn't clear] I remember when it was going to be Web 3.0. Tim Berners-Lee gave a talk about it when he won the Draper prize.

As others have said, classification is difficult under the best of circumstances. And it just doesn't fit with the way the Internet has evolved. We have Wikipedia, not the Encyclopedia Galactica.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#34

Post by pornel » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:31 PM UTC

1. We've realized that people in general can't reliably and consistently mark data up. That's a problem of incentives, technical difficulties, UI, bitrot of invisible metadata, etc.

2. We've settled on extracting information from "raw" text (with everything from regexes to recognize flight info in e-mails to getting word statistics from terabytes of garbage) and duct-taping that with special-purpose APIs.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#35

Post by mindB » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:41 PM UTC

The semantic web is alive and well. It's just not in the places you're looking. I recommend checking out indieweb.org for a community devoted to building on the semantic web. Just because the big websites aren't using it doesn't mean the technology is dying.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#36

Post by ghaff » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:46 PM UTC

executesorder66 wrote: post #28

acutesoftware wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, but I just assumed they use it everywhere. They have a very good mapping of related terms and a fairly consistent mapping. A visible example is when you look for organisations and they have a classification against it. e.g. Google IBM and they call it "Computer manufacturing company" - these classifications are different to many of the standards for specific sets of data

Where do you see google calling IBM a "Computer manufacturing company" if you search for IBM? I'm not saying they don't. I just want to see examples of what you are talking about. I googled IBM, and did not see it classified as such.

It does for me. But this actually highlights one of the problems with classifications like this. Is IBM really primarily a computer manufacturing company today? Their systems business is only about 15% of revenue.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#37

Post by pfooti » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:48 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #31

drcode wrote: post #25

I think the main issue is that even though "knowledge representation" with ontologies is an enticing goal, it's simply a fact that real entities, as used by humans at a practical level, don't map neatly onto mathematically-sound hierarchies.. . To see this, just look at the arguments the ancient Greeks already had as to whether a human is a "two-legged featherless animal" or the endless online arguments as to whether…

> don't map neatly onto mathematically-sound hierarchies. I think they do, but finding the right mathematical model is very difficult. If it were easy, everyone would be a mathematics PhD. Learning to program is becoming efficient at recognizing the right spherical cow in any given situation, because such shortcuts are essential to getting shit done.

There's a difference between correct ontologies and the ones humans use, however. We may succeed at mapping all domains effectively, but in order to get people to use those maps, you would have to convince people that a pop tart is a kind of ravioli.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#38

Post by api » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:49 PM UTC

drcode wrote: post #25

I think the main issue is that even though "knowledge representation" with ontologies is an enticing goal, it's simply a fact that real entities, as used by humans at a practical level, don't map neatly onto mathematically-sound hierarchies.. . To see this, just look at the arguments the ancient Greeks already had as to whether a human is a "two-legged featherless animal" or the endless online arguments as to whether…

Then you have the whole adversarial network aspect. People will intentionally pollute the category system for purposes of advertising, propaganda, jokes, etc. Google bombing is basically a kind of semantic hijacking that happens already and we don't even have a semantic web.

The test for any proposed Internet standard or system should be "what happens when 4chan hears about it?" I don't see semantic web ideas taking off outside of closed forums and walled gardens like academic research or the military. On the public Internet you'll rapidly end up with Donald Trump mapping to "small penis," etc.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#39

Post by tuukkah » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

It pivoted to Linked Data [1] with less focus on ontologies and AI and more focus on linking, open data and a Web of Data [2].

One nice demo of the latest advances is how you can query Wikidata client-side without downloading the whole database for queries like "Directors of movies starring Brad Pitt": http://ldfclient.wmflabs.org

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_data

[2] https://www.w3.org/2013/data/

Re: Ask HN: What happened to the semantic web?

#40

Post by acutesoftware » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

executesorder66 wrote: post #28

acutesoftware wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, but I just assumed they use it everywhere. They have a very good mapping of related terms and a fairly consistent mapping. A visible example is when you look for organisations and they have a classification against it. e.g. Google IBM and they call it "Computer manufacturing company" - these classifications are different to many of the standards for specific sets of data

Where do you see google calling IBM a "Computer manufacturing company" if you search for IBM? I'm not saying they don't. I just want to see examples of what you are talking about. I googled IBM, and did not see it classified as such.

When I am logged on to Google I see companies details in a right hand side pane (when the search term is unambiguous)

For IBM it says

  IBM
  Computer manufacturing company
  Image result for ibm
  IBM is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, 
  United States, with operations in over 170 countries. Wikipedia
  Stock price: IBM (NYSE) USD155.39 +2.71 (+1.77%)
  10 Apr., 4:00 pm GMT-4 - Disclaimer
  Founder: Charles Ranlett Flint
  Founded: 16 June 1911, New York City, New York, United States
  Headquarters: Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States
  Subsidiaries: Trusteer, FileNet, IBM Global Services, Ustream, MORE
  Executives: Ginni Rometty (CEO, President, Chairperson), MORE
  Did you know: IBM is the world's eighth-largest information technology company by revenue. 
  wikipedia.org