Glacial Erratics

Abstract Monkey Wrenches

March 26, 2003

Development Notebook: RDF is a monkey wrench?    (0000BU)

Danny Ayers comments on an anti-RDF piece by Sean McGrath?, saying it is "trival to debunk." I don't think his concerns can be tossed aside so easily.    (0000BV)

There is a lot of truth in what Sean is saying. I don't think he's really saying that there's anything wrong with RDF itself, but suggesting instead that since it is an abstraction (such an abstraction) it has significant barriers to entry and use.    (0000BW)

Also, I don't think you can put people's willingness to use programmatic abstractions and data abstractions into the same box. Especially in a situation where people imagine that the data abstractions are only a few short steps from being a human communication medium.    (0000BX)

This is related to what I was trying to say over on the collab lists.    (0000BY)

A tool like RDF is hard to use because its uses are abstract rather than concrete. You can't walk up to it and comprehend, in short order, what it is for. Nor is it particularly easy to try so the sort of clear breakdown that would lead to a present-at-hand moment doesn't happen so the real goal, where use is ready-to-hand, doesn't happen either.    (0000BZ)

More on tools that are first present and then ready-to-hand.    (0000C0)

Comments

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On March 26, 2003 11:55 AM Danny said:

Hi Chris, I don't know if you'll have got the ping, but I've posted a follow up at http://dannyayers.com/archives/001032.html    (0000MC)

An interesting point I just noticed in the #rdfig logs in reference to abstraction and data - what about relational databases!? These are just as abstract and difficult as RDF, but are *everywhere*. Ok, so I suppose being around for 30 years helps...    (0000MD)

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On March 27, 2003 04:12 AM Chris said:

Are relational databases as abstract and difficult as RDF? I'm not sure. RDF to me, because of all the associated syntax is a big pile of cruft.

That's a representation problem, I realize, as the amount of cruft to support an RDBMS is very large, but we don't think of the data with that cruft.

I think this points out a problem with RDF, one that can be solved.

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On March 28, 2003 05:52 PM BillSeitz said:

I think the semantic web crowd needs to map an adoption path that will lead to a tangible and interesting application.    (0000ME)

http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2003-03-28-RdfMonkeywrench    (0000MF)

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On March 28, 2003 10:58 PM Chris said:

In other words make it do something rather than talk about how much it can do? Yeah, I'd have to agree with that :)

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