Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Semantic Web Meets The Blogosphere

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
Let's begin with the end on this one, a very Kantian thought: "each animal in cyberspace is a placeholder for a human being with a certain unique sphere of interests. This way, no node in the network is ever redundant or obsolete: everybody contributes, and there is no dead weight." This is right, and deeply right. Now how does this come to be? "Blogs make the perfect basic units for a human-driven semantic web (just like neurons are the perfect basic units for a brain). Of course, this kind of a semantic web is an emergent behaviour rather than an intentional construct (anthill vs. bridge, to use cliche images)." Abstract this just a touch - after all, a person's web footprint doesn't have to be a blog. But the important message is this: people expect the cybersphere to be like a big expert system, with rules, categories, and inferences. But it won't work like that - look up combinatorial explosion. Via Monkeymagic.

Today: 0 Total: 1365 [Direct link] [Share]

Image from the website


Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

Copyright 2024
Last Updated: May 05, 2024 09:51 a.m.

Canadian Flag Creative Commons License.

Force:yes