Tim Berners-Lee – “The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”

This statement projects the typical view of the ‘semantic web’ that somehow the chaotic and loosely defined nature of the web can be tamed by applying syllogistic deductive logic. However, syllogisms often lead to the inadvertent application of generalizations that, while seeking to prove truth, end up only proving that there are always exceptions to any rule. As a pertinent example, (and to maintain a theme on my blog):

All people, are unique individual humans
All Facebook users are people
Therefore, all Facebook users are unique individual humans

(incorrect!)

So, one could obviously factor in the undeterminable probability of ‘Facebook-Trolls’, but to put in place a system that corrects the contextual mistakes of syllogisms would be a gargantuan task. As Clay Shirky stated back in November 2003, (discussing the semantic web) – “Any requirement that a given statement be cross-checked against a library of context-giving statements, which would have still further context, would doom the system to death by scale.” (http://tinyurl.com/uakb)

In the end, it could be said that it’s the ‘top-down’ nature of the push for the ‘semantic web’ that makes it so obviously not a ‘bottom-up’ phenomenon.

The new breed of P2P search projects that are contending for the ‘next big thing in search’ holy-grail, like Faroo (www.faroo.com) and Minerva (www.minerva-project.org) have taken the semantic overlay networks (SON) approach to organize peer-nodes and data objects into clusters in accordance with the inherent semantics of the content in these networks.

These projects look at the semantics of an existing resource and attempt to use semantic rules and processes to facilitate the search and retrieval of data or files from that resource. The trouble is that this is a little like the semantic web approach, where semantic rules are formulated to attempt to make some order with regard to an open-ended amount of heterogeneous web data.

This application of ‘semantics’ is in contrast to the way the term ‘semantics’ is being used in the fields of ‘Emergent-Semantics’ and ‘Semiotic-Dynamics’ which are more concerned with neologisms (newly coined words or expressions) and evolving language systems, and specifically, ‘tagging’ and ‘folksonomies’ as evidence of these phenomena. (see the work of Ciro Cattuto http://tinyurl.com/b5z3g7 and ref: www.tagora-project.eu )

‘Emergent-Semantics’ and ‘Semiotic-Dynamics’ are relatively new fields of study that have gained some interest due in part to the general interest in ‘Semantic-Web’ research but specifically the recognized properties of folksonomies that display power-law and small-world characteristics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Law)

These fields, “study how semiotic relations can originate, spread, and evolve over time in populations, by combining recent advances in linguistics and cognitive science with methodological and theoretical tools from complex systems and computer science.”

The stated aims of the ‘Semantic Web’: “a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.” [Berners-Lee 2001] seem somewhat quixotic by comparison to the immediacy and relevance of the study of the ‘emergent semantics’ of the web and the plainly obvious evolving language systems characterised by the tagging phenomenon, which are unmistakably ‘bottom-up’ in nature.

(my blog: http://edgepolitics.blogspot.com)

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I have a friend, who up until recently, was quite a good friend, but then something strange happened. His dark, mischievous sense of humor, which had always been one of the qualities that made him unique and often terribly funny, suddenly discovered a vehicle that offered him something akin to supernatural powers. Like the power to transform himself into anyone he wished, or to be multiple people at the same time. The power to gain the confidence and trust of strangers by morphing into the identity of their trusted friends. On top of this, he had the power to anonymously wreak social havoc, distress and disorder, only to then be able to disappear like a thief in the night.

How did he obtain these supernatural powers? He signed up with Facebook, and slowly but surely became a Facebook “Troll”. Unfortunately, he is not alone. There are many individuals that exploit the unintended gaps within the fabric of sites like Facebook to impersonate and humiliate people that they don’t know.

One alarming aspect of this phenomenon is that these people are able to conduct this activity only by making quasi-partners of legitimate web-sites and services like Facebook and GMail, which is often used to generate fake email addresses to qualify for additional user accounts on social networking sites.

So, with human nature being what it is, one thing that we can depend on is that the trend will continue and there is very little that can be done about it. This then leads to the conclusion that in many ways the web has reached a point akin to what is known as the ‘tragedy of the commons’… meaning that the common area that became popular has now become too popular. So popular that in fact many of the benefits have been spoiled.

Its clear that many people will regret profoundly, releasing their private pictures and personal details innocently on the web, because once released, often they may never be able to be completely retrieved.

Which brings me to the idea of ‘open’ vs ‘closed’… Is it just me, or does the idea of a closed personal network to exchange information with friends seem so much more appealing than an open one?

I think there is a huge area of opportunity here, to appeal to ‘non-consumers’ of open-networks. These would be networks that people used to conduct genuine conversations with real friends from the real world. They would not necessarily be exclusive of strangers, but rather protective of relationships. New acquaintances could be invited in based on genuine qualification, again, in the real world.

My guess is that this period in the first decade of the 21st Century will be characterized by recollections of how so many people got burned by being ‘too open’.

* (NOTE: This article is not intended to be a critique on the principles of ‘open-cooperation’ which are to be lauded as forward-thinking and appropriate for internet communities. The intention of the article is to focus on some of the negative externalities of ‘centralized’ social networks like Facebook and MySpace)

Related External Links:

Original Story, with updated related events: http://www.edgepolitics.com/?p=16
Detailed Account of updated events: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/34778

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