though the point is simple i think it’s a huge step. the media in this country is a major player in mind control. more than anything else i think.

So, trying another method, the examples in my last post should have been something like:

<meta name=”DDS” value=”539″>

or

<xml>
<DDS>539</DDS>
</xml>

That is, the information being “embeded” would, most probably, in my opinion, be in the form of metadata resulting from human evaluation of the content of a resource and humans somehow encodding that evaluation in a “machine readable” form.

Machines don’t actually “read” and understand anything. They are only capable of matching character strings. It is up to humans to program the computers and tell them what to do once they find a match.

If “metadata” CONCEPTS were strictly formatted and standardized then computers would be able to recognize “concepts” if those concepts were represented in the form of unique character strings or codes (so they wouldn’t be confused with ordinary language or be otherwise ambiguous).

The computer could then be programmed to do things that would appear to be quite intelligent but would actually just be following a program based upon matching a character string.

For this to happen, people would need access to some sort of standard “language” or set of codes that represented “concepts” and these codes would have to be reasonably understandable to humans before there would be any major movement towards adding the appropriate metadata (concept codes) to their websites.

In other words, using the Dewey Decimal System “codes” as an example.

If people simply began adding something like:

or

(Though this later example is not within standard HTML specs. that I know of)

A computer could then be programmed to recognize this as relating to the concept of “Quantum Mechanics” within the concept of “Physics”-530 within the concept of “Science”-500 even if the resource did not make mention of any of these “KEY WORDS”, or any words at all, The resource might infact be a picture of a particle interaction within a bubble chamber as part of a Physics experiment with no words at all, yet the computer would “know” or recognize from the metadata that the resource was related to Quantum Physics.

Of course, in this example, It might be that one person used DDS for metadata while someone else used Library of Congress codes, while someone else used subject terms (Key words), while someone else used another system of categorization altogether… So in order for something like that to work the “Metadata” codes must be strictly defined and standardized.

And, of course, using DDS is probably out due to possible copyright issues. The LC system is not comprehensive enough to categorize internet resources. So probably some entirely new set of metadata codes would need to be standardized.

XML goes some distance in this direction but I’m not sure the potential XML “codes” are sufficiently standardized nor is XML easily understandable for the ordinary web master to implement.

In other words, whatever system of encodding data is used for this “semantic web”, ideally, it should be both computer readable as well as reasonably understandable to humans who must do the actual conceptualization and encodding so as to make the “concepts” computer readable.

There was a thread in “The Well” some time back where it was stated that this sort of “VISUALIZATION” would be the future in terms of returning search engine results.

Imagine the same sort of functionality, but instead of a simple Thesaurus or Dictionary the “visualization” of interconnected ideas would actually end up leading to web sites within the chosen categories rather than just definitions of terms.

A kind of visual web of the web itself. A means of seeing how web sites are interrelated rather than just words.

There is a fee (according to the referenced State University of New York web site) for searching via the FirstSearch research service. This is a service which accesses WorldCat among other databases (such as Medline and ERIC). FirstSearch isn’t WorldCat: it’s a research service which access WorldCat.

The search engines have been carrying a subset of WorldCat data as a pilot project. OCLC hopes to make search engine access of WorldCat a permanent part of their service to member libraries.

…This is a route to AI on the web. It embeds a machine-readable explanation or description of the web into the web itself.

It isn’t meant for humans to use directly. It needs applications which make use of it. Maybe some of those will reach the average user and his web page.

The idea of what those applications might be (or become) excites the imagination, and accounts for the coolness factor. That doesn’t seem too be mentioned much, and feels disingenuous.

I believe the solution to the information overload and irrelevant search results described in the article is not to change or improve search engine capabilities per-se but to improve metadata indexing on the part of web-masters and internet content providers so that the search engines have something relavant to look for in terms of the value and importance of information.

Some of the most important meta-data that should be incorporated into a web-site as well as LINKS to a web-site are:

Subject (of course), Location (if relevant such as for a “brick and mortar” business or an scheduled event in the real world) original date posted, source, target audiance, exspiration (When information looses its value, for example: a page about an event becomes irrelevant for most purposes the day after the event.), Some indication of the web-page’s importance for the field of study to which the page relates might be indicated. (for example a “Links” page or any link anywhere could include metadata that indicates the relative importance of each page or link.)

Information (links) could also be ranked according to the credibility of the source (in the opinion of the site providing the link.

Search engines could give an information source some priority if several other sites give a high ranking to the information in terms of importance, credibility, urgency(time, exspiration etc.)

The regular incorporation of such metadata on web sites and links to web sites would provide more criteria for search engine selection of information rather than relying on “key words” alone.

Unfortunately the current structure for including “matadata” on a web page is not standardized. There is, as yet, no agreed-upon method or standard for including such information, therefore the search engines don’t “know” what to look for.

No mention is made in regard to membership fees if any. Though I believe library membership in OCLC is already a requirement: “To participate in the Open WorldCat pilot, a library must have contributed records and/or ownership (holdings) information to WorldCat.”

Will there be an additional fee on top of the current OCLC library membership fee?

One site mentions: “When you want to do a search, you access the databases through OCLC’s fee for service (means not free!) system” - http://www.oneonta.edu/library/critical/INFOLIT/course/libsys/lim6p1.htm

XML:Extensible Markup Language, OWL: Ontology Web Language, RDF: Resource Descriptor Framework, URI: Uniform Resource Identifier and DAML: Darpa Agency Mark-up Language. And your average Joe posting a web page is supposed to learn and understand all this and add it to his web site? The articles state that Web Publishers are supposed to add these coded tags and what not to their own websites for this to work.

It (XML) has some usefulnes and is already being used by some giant web-portals that can afford a full time IT staff to work on it and keep it going but I’m afraid that 99.99% of Web Masters will never comprehend it or use it to contribute their page to the “semantic web” in its current proposed form using “standard”(?) XML.

It would have to be greatly simplified and standardised so that just about anyone could learn to understand it and use it in no more time than it takes to learn basic HTML. I would hope much less time than that.

As it is, I’ve been reading about and studying XML off and on for years and I still can’t quite grasp how someone is supposed to use it on their web page in the manner proposed by this “semantic web” idea.