ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 2: Search Engines, User Interfaces for Data, Wolfram Alpha, And More... - Page 3
The Internet of Things
RWW: I'm fascinated by how the Internet is becoming more and more integrated into the real world. For example the Internet of Things, where everyday objects become Internet connected via sensors. Have you been following this trend closely too, and if so what impact do you think this will have on the Web in say 5 years time?
TBL: It connects very much with Semantic Web [and] with linked data. With Linked Data you've got the ability to give a thing a URI. So I can give a URI to my phone, and I can say that's my phone in Linked Data. And also the company that made it can give a URI to the model of the phone. They can also put online all the specs of the phone, and then I can make a link to say that my phone is an example of that product. So now any system which is dealing with me and has access to that data will be able to figure out the sorts of things I can do with my phone, which actually is really valuable. Especially if the phone breaks.
"The Semantic Web is a web of things, conceptually. Tying an actual thing down to a part of the web is the last mile."
The Semantic Web has already given URIs to things, and to types of things. When the things themselves have an RFID chip in them, then I think it's a very exciting world. One can take that RFID chip, go to the Internet and find out the data about the thing. Whether we'll be able to do that, whether the manufacturers will be open enough to allow me to turn data about the identifier of the thing into data about the thing, is yet to be seen. But it's a very exciting idea.
Pachube, an example of the Internet of Things (see ReadWriteWeb profile)
Similarly, I'd like to be able to scan a barcode and get back nutritional information about what's in - for example - a can of food. But we don't have that yet. To get that sort of thing, which is very powerful, we need to build look-up systems, which allow you to translate an RFID code or a barcode into an HTTP address.
The Semantic Web is a web of things, conceptually. Tying an actual thing down to a part of the web is the last link - the last mile. Give the thing a notion of its own identity in the web.
Conclusion
RWW: The over-riding message in both Part 1 and 2 of our interview with Tim Berners-Lee, is for companies and organizations to make their data available online. Preferably as Linked Data, which uses a subset of Semantic Web technologies. But Berners-Lee noted, in Part 1 of our interview, that he'd even be happy with the data in CSV (comma separated values) format.
It's clear that we've seen a lot of progress in linked data already in 2009. In upcoming posts on ReadWriteWeb, we'll continue to track this trend and explain how organizations can contribute their data.
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The problems of interfaces is a very important one, not only for displaying the linked data, but also for motivating the users to enter it and to interact with it. We're working for over 2 years already testing out different interfaces for ThisIsLike.Com – seeing what works best to make people excited about entering their data into the system and link it together.
> "keywords haven't proven up to the task of finding stuff on the Web. One of the reasons is that people lie, the other is that they can't be bothered to enter keywords"
TBL said it perfectly. In fact, with meta-data, users are ENCOURAGED to lie because they know the data is going to be used to organize or prioritize content.
If users want their 15 minutes of fame for writing customer or peer reviews, then of course they tag their review with popular search terms and rate the video (or blog posting) a 10 or a 0.
I'm interested in this issue because I've been working with a team to see if we can rate, cluster, summarize, and compare objects using algorithms that rely solely on linguistic and semantic analysis of text reviews.
Thanks for the great interview!
I really like this interview and re-read it a couple of times. It contains a lot of the essential grounding elements for the Semantic Web and its evolution.
URI's and RDFized content will become mainstream.
Exciting.
What am I missing? The premise seems to be fatally flawed. As long as RDFa's are dependent on static links, this idea is doomed to failure. Your ability to take advantage of Linked Data will only be as good as: a) the extent of your prior knowledge of relevant URIs to link to; b) prior knowledge by other parties of your data's relevance to them, to create reverse link back to you; and c) the accuracy of the links, which have a notoriously short half-life,
Example to illustrate points a and b: TBL states "I'd like to be able to scan a barcode and get back nutritional information about what's in - for example - a can of food. But we don't have that yet.". But we DO have that, in the form of apps for both iPhone and Android. The problem is that TBL doesn't know they exist, so he can't link to them, and they don't know he exists, so they can't reverse link to him.
As to point c, how many times have you run into broken links, for data that has moved or disappeared? Static links are already problematic, and wide adoption RDFa will exponentially exacerbate the problem.
Seems to me what is really needed here is a standardized way to index keywords of "target" URIs, and standardized ways in RDF to create dynamic links to those URIs. Until then, Data Linking will continue be limited to small closed environments.
Am I wrong? What am I missing?