Hypertext2007 Carole Goble Keynote - "The Return of the Prodigal Web"

The Return of the Prodigal Web Carole Goble Information Management Group The University of Manchester, UK [email_address]

The Return of the Prodigal Me Semantic Web E-Science (life science) Distributed Computing Hypermedia Web Accessibility

What’s the Story? Hypertext, and its offspring the Web, envisioned collective intelligence. Both propose technical infrastructure and social infrastructure to do this. The Web “made riotous living”. Two evolutions of the Web – Web 2.0 and Semantic Web – could (potentially) return the Web to the Hypertext family. By stealth. We have applications that show this. “ We should make merry, and be glad”. How? Is it done? Lessons learned? Why bother?

Spot the Difference Competition The Return of the Prodigal Web, Carole Goble Back to the Future with Hypertext: A Tale of Two or Three Conferences, Wendy Hall Back to the Future: Hypertext the Way It Used To Be, Ted Nelson and Robert Adamson Smith Hypertext Tragedy, A Panel Is Simon trying to tell us something?

Back in the Day Or Back to the Future….

Xanadu: a system in which it will be possible to store anything that anybody has ever written (or photographed or filmed) that can connect any piece of information to any other piece of information Augmentation of the human intellect. “ Adequately equipped with machines which leave him free to use his primary attribute as a human being – the ability to think creatively and wisely, unencumbered by unworthy tasks – man can face an increasingly complex existence with hope, even with confidence.” “ the interaction between person and hypertext could be so intuitive that the machine-readable information space gave an accurate representation of the state of people's thoughts, interactions, and work patterns, then machine analysis could become a very powerful management tool, seeing patterns in our work and facilitating our working together through the typical problems which beset the management of large organizations.”

A universal medium for harvesting and harnessing collective intelligence making and using connections between decoupled content and decoupled people.

How? Hypermedia Systems that present the same media (text) in multiple CONTEXTS Systems that enable the communication of RELATIONSHIPS between documents Frank Shipman

Technical Infrastructure Management of nodes and links and anchors. Combining and aggregating content and structure. Architectures and models for these connections. Social Infrastructure Authoring. Navigating and Finding. Making connections between people and content. DIY content aggregation. Adaptation. Reuse.

Build Hypermedia Create Content and Connections Cruise it. Use it.

It’s the LINK, baby LINKs as first class citizens Embedded and non-embedded LINK ing LINK bases, open hypermedia LINK architectures and LINK models LINK typing, LINK properties Two way LINK ing LINK context, LINK filtering LINK trails, Computed LINK s LINK management LINK behaviours, Dangling LINK s LINK navigation, Adaptive LINK ing Rhetoric of LINKS LINK authoring Reusing resources through different LINK sets. LINK foo. LINK bar.

Open Architectures Anchor object Link object Anchor object Node Object Node Object Link Base Link Service My Favourite Application Your Favourite Application

Link behaviours Fluid Hypertext, Polle Zellweger, 2002

Link types Normal Links Citation source, pioneer, credit, leads, eponym Background FutureWork Refutation Support Methodology Data Generalize Specialize Abstraction Example Formalization Application Commentary Links Comment critical, supportive RelatedWork misrepresents, vacuum, ignores, isSupersededBy, isRefutedBy, isSupportedBy, redundant ProblemPosing trivial, unimportant, impossible, ill-posed, solved, ambitious Thesis trivial, unimportant, irrelevant, redherring, contradict, dubious, counterexample, inelegant, simplistic, arbitrary, unmotivated Argumentation invalid, insufficient, immaterial, misleading, alternative, strawman Data inadequate, dubious, ignores, irrelevant, inapplicable, misinterpreted Style boring, unimaginative, incoherent, arrogant, rambling, awkward Argument deduction, induction, analogy, intuition solution Summarization Detail AlternateView Rewrite Explanation Simplification Complication Update Correction Continuation http:// www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/archives/Trigg.html [Randall Trigg, 83]

Open Composite Models High level representation Dynamic Virtual Reuse We would call this a mash-up aggregating content feeds today.

I’m sure Ted will tell you all about Transclusion.

Open Authoring Reuse content for a different audience. adaptation of materials you don’t control Alternate paths New paths The annotation thang. Fuzzy distinction between authors and readers. Possibly.

Open Well yes…but a Closed System mentality. Come and look in MY system. Kind of assumption that content was limited and controlled Closed Authoring and Closed Architectures

TBL’s original LINK fest 1989

Simple Hypermedia Simple. Distributed. Low barrier of entry Network effect Long tail Open Architecture Robust. Don’t restrict, fix! Cooperate, don’t control. Scalable.

Simple Hypermedia Simple link types Composite nodes Virtualisation Computed links All added in through rich browser and server technologies and applications. CMS

Search  Composites  Virtual  Extensibility  Computation  Open Standards  Versioning  Collaboration  Halasz’s Seven Issues

Browsers and Apps Portal Frameworks CMS & EnterpriseServers

DLRS circa 1998 Publishers linkbases People database Keyword linkbases Proxy Hyper link Agent XLink linkbases User profiles Person Agent Citation Agent Bibliography database IR Agent Inverted index Ontology Agent Web Browser Web Server Carr, Hughs, Hall, De Roure et al, University of Southampton, UK

Do links appear? Sure! Google rocks because of Links. XLink – but that never took off….. Open hypermedia in Content Management Systems on a big scale Active Navigation - Dynamic Link Injection Hyperwave - Collaborative Information Management” Web + Open Hypermedia is an extra layer of software engineering.  Wikis

But lets face it, its still Node-Centric There is no Link Model. Makes Context and Management Harder. Links are embedded in the Applications. Captive in their systems. No infrastructure outside the application or the browser. No Third Party Link Authoring (except shared bookmarking) User participation is Reader Participation.

The Web “made riotous living”

Hypermedia on the Web. Versioning. Collaboration. Links. No Link Model outside the wiki.

O’Reilly Publishing 2005ish. Bottom Up & Emergent. A collection of in use memes, patterns and practices. A mind set. A Marketing tool. Web as platform. User participation. Content aggregation and generation. Hackability and remixability. Hype – yes. Substance – yes.

Web as Programming Platform. Perpetual Beta. Cooperate, Don't Control. Design for Mash-ups, hackability, remixability. Syndicate Content. Web Services. Standards. Protocols. Collect the collective intelligence The Social Web. Long tail. Network effects by default. Collective Intelligence. Users Add Value. DIY. Tagging. Blogging. Social Networking. Social Information. Social linking. Linking people. Content sharing. Unique content by people. “ Perpetual Beta” of syndicated content. Adapted from Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 2005

Social Recommendations Collaborative, Social Tagging Collaborative, Social Bookmarking Content Sharing Application Execution

Tags New Content New Capability

Mash–up hypertext Composites OUTSIDE the application and in the cloud. Rich User Experience Two way linking in blogs and wikis. Matt’s quote

G oogle AdWords + Google Maps + hostip.info + Microsoft Virtual Earth + NASA + NOAA Weather Service + WeatherBug + Yahoo Geocoding + Yahoo Maps + Yahoo Traffic

The Hypermedia Node Web 1.0 : HTML pages served up then viewed using a browser Read Page Static Web Coders Client/Server Web Browser Geeks Web 2.0 : Web pages plus other content, shared (interactively) over the web. More like an application than a page Write & Contribute Post Dynamic Everyone RESTful Web Services Browser, RSS Reader, App Mass Amateurisation From Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 2005

What’s this got to do with Hypermedia? The Social Writing sharing of content and links. The Infrastructure for Dynamic Hypertext. Content syndication IS computation in the Hypertext. Mash-ups ARE composite hypermedia nodes. The Return to Reuse. Link behaviour in the browser. Two way linking in wikis and blogs. Link types by microformats. Javascript Libraries for multi-headed links etc.

Web 2.0 Microformats AJAX, JSON Tagging CSS, XSLT XPointer, XML Web 2.0 REST, Tagging RSS, ATOM, APIs OpenID, Identity 2.0 Ruby on Rails

Linking by Folksonomies Words and Tags COHSE: Link Generator Over the Web Link Service Link base Document Linked Document

COHSE: Linking in the World Wild Web

Link generator Metadata provides a mechanism: for resource discovery & provision of source anchors . at browse time and authoring time. Annotation allows both linking into and out of a resource. Software agents that generates links Resource Discovery Link Construction

Mind the Gap! Linking is tags, APIs and browser Link model? No information model and information integration mechanism Tags and folksonomies - a bit hit and miss Controlled vocabularies? Back in the day we talked about Conceptual Hypermedia Systems.

Berners-Lee and Hendler vision Top Down and Planned. Research agenda for A.I. and data management An enrichment of the Web Web as Knowledge Space. Open Information Infrastructure Universal medium for Information exchange and fusion. Semantic content aggregation, integration and generation. Machine participation. Hype – yes. Substance – possibly.

Web as Information Platform. A Layered, Open Information Model Mark-up and tagging framework. Uniform Data Model. Enriching Knowledge Model. Self-describing, machine processable. Web Services. Standards. Protocols. Collect collective intelligence Infer intelligence The Socio-Semantic Web. Network effects by default. Collective Intelligence. Computed Intelligence. Users Add Value. Tagging. Blogging. Machines Add Value. Content sharing. Content and connection inference. Unique content by people and automated processes. “ Perpetual Beta” of semantics.

The Semantics are in the Link URI> <a href= HTML Web page Any Web Resource <a href=“http://…”> Adapted from Figure by Jim Hendler URI URI URI Resource Description Framework URI URI Concept Web Resource RDFS OWL

 p ->  a; p=a  p ->  a; p=a  p ->  a; p=a  p ->  a; p=a  p ->  a; p=a Web of Trust Data Fusion Model Fusion RDF OWL, RDFS SWRL XML SKOS

Navigate the Semantic Web Navigate the Web

Navigate the Semantic Web Navigate the Web Conceptual Hypermedia, circa 1998 Index  Space Document Space

Back in the Day…. Dagstuhl 2000

Topic Location Date University Company Funder Annotation assert facts using terms (metadata in RDF) Represent terms and their relationships (ontology in RDFS/OWL) Conference Event Organisation Professional Body

Annotation Links + Ontology Annotation allows explicit decoration of documents with concepts . Link Service Document Linked Document Ontology Linkbase Annotations

COHSE Link Box skos:prefLabel Covers degradation issues and human impact…. skos:scopeNote Environmental Protection Countryside Conservation skos:specific skos:prefLabel skos:related skos:related skos:prefLabel skos:prefLabel National Parks Environmental and Ear…

Semantic Media Wikis Link types – Yay! KB within Wiki Courtesy Max Völkel

Integration use a uniform common model in RDF Connecting through shared terms and shared instances Preserving context and provenance Data mining Knowledge Discovery Smart search Social networking Smart portals Agents Information Integration and aggregation

W3C Semantic Web and HealthCare And Life Sciences SIG Courtesy Susie Stephens, Lilly

Smashing: A Semantic-Mash-Up Courtesy Alan Ruttenberg, Science Commons

The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems Paul De Bra, Lora Aroyo and Vadim Chepegin Journal of Digital Information , Volume 5 Issue 1 Article No. 247, 2004-05-27

Adapt and evolve linking and navigation infrastructure Change ontology, change links Change annotations, change links Change link base, change links Person models Multiple and personalised ontologies & annotations Monitor annotations & concepts followed Change the user, change the semantics

Web 2.0 Microformats AJAX, JSON Tagging CSS, XSLT XPointer, XML Web 2.0 REST, Tagging RSS, ATOM, APIs OpenID, Identity 2.0 Ruby on Rails Semantic Web

Semantic Web Myths “ Semantic Web people try to enforce meaning from the top” “ The Semantic Web people will require everybody to subscribe to a single predefined "meaning" for the terms we use “ The Semantic Web will require users to understand the complicated details of formalised knowledge representation” “ The Semantic Web people will require us to manually markup all the existing web-pages” Who are these evil “Semantic Web people”? Acknowledgement: Frank van Harmelen, panel WWW2006

Web as Platform. Integration in the model and the browser. Lightweight development models. Model, yes. Infrastructure, no. (http://openanzo.org/). Content. A little semantics goes a long way (SKOS) Web 3.0? The Socio-Semantic Web. Consensual semantic acquisition Social networking, Folksonomies, Tags Plus ontologies User Participation models. More thinking, less reasoning.

“ We should make merry and be glad” Hypermedia as collective intelligence We can do Memex. But not in the way the visionaries thought. We let in the oiks. Really open, on a scale unpredicted. Really social infrastructure. Open Hypermedia as the mechanism Links are thriving. Its done. Get over it. Do we need to bother with a formal link model? Versioning and anchor models are still missing… Hypermedia authoring by Semantic Model authoring Was link management, Now RDF management Was dangling links, Now dead annotation and XPointer frailty Was link authoring, now ontology authoring But once author a model it becomes a closed system. Surely?

“We should make merry and be glad” Hypermedia as collective intelligence Not in the way the visionaries thought. Really Open. We let in the oiks. Open Hypermedia as the mechanism Composites & Links are thriving. Its done. Get over it. Why bother with a formal link model? Versioning and anchor models are still missing…. Hypermedia authoring by Semantic Model authoring Was link management, Now RDF management Was dangling links, Now stale annotation and XPointer frailty. Was link authoring, now ontology authoring

Engineering complexity The Web worked because it was simple. Extra layers of software engineering. Xlink bombed. Need more than a standard. Web succeeded without a link model. Keep the footprint small. It will break. Get over it. Vanilla technologies. Stumbles Authoring Complexity. Extra layers of model. Content! The Ontology! The Annotation! Temptation to be too clever. Hypermedia authoring becomes Annotation authoring – get your link base! Hypermedia authoring becomes Ontology authoring.

But ontology authoring and annotation authoring isn’t hypermedia authoring

Seduced by knowledge … The ontology model is seductive way of driving the navigation between resources But a Model of knowledge is NOT a Model of Navigation You know about Hypermedia, Hypermedia design, Hypermedia patterns, Hypermedia navigation

Hypermedia - This is Our Time Figure Courtesy Tim Berners-Lee

Big take homes Web 2.0 is deeply intertwingled with the hypertext vision Semantic Web isn’t the universal panacea. It has many of the same problems as oh. It’s a myth that the Web doesn’t do links. Still more to do. You can help. Embrace!

With thanks to… Sean Bechhofer, David De Roure Rest of the COHSE team: Yeliz Yesilada, Bernard Horan, Les Carr, Wendy Hall Simon Harper http://cohse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/ http://www.biotec.tu-dresden.de/sealife/

Questions…just what is Open? Are first class links worth the bother? “ I don’t want anyone with a GeoCities account pointing back to me” Is resource reuse only useful for closed teaching systems? Or closed enterprises? Open Hypermedia on the web – open to resources, closed to the application? Is the semantic web just link mashing?

Prodigal Son Returns How to help and what to learn from. What we did wrong and hence what will go wrong. Used mainly in teaching. Where do you get the links from?

This is why our time has come. Back to the future Your future is my past No. We are not waiting for the to catch up, the web is waiting for us. Could do if it wanted. The prodigal son picture, relabelled.

Hypertext2007 Carole Goble Keynote - "The Return of the Prodigal Web"

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to Hypertext2007 Carole Goble Keynote - "The Return of the Prodigal Web"

Recently uploaded

Hypertext2007 Carole Goble Keynote - "The Return of the Prodigal Web"