Loomio
Tue 5 Aug 2014 1:47AM

Linked Open Data

ST Simon Tegg Public Seen by 73

One of the interesting points to come out of the Communicating OpenApp thread was the current focus on Linked Open Data.

Open-App stakeholders unfamiliar with the concept might wonder what Linked Open Data is and what is has to do with "tools for commons-based peer production" and user value.

Use this thread to ask questions about Linked Open Data and what it means for Open-App. I'll update it with my own comments.

Resources:
Tim Berners-Lee TED talk on Linked Open Data

What is Linked Data? video

What is JSON-LD? video

JSON API :: A standard for building APIs in JSON

For more detailed and advanced topics you can check out http://www.euclid-project.eu/

ST

Simon Tegg Tue 5 Aug 2014 3:59AM

I'm quite excited about the potential of Linked Open Data. I see at as the next evolution of the web. Though I probably need to justify what I mean by that.

I think technology has biases. In energy systems for example, rooftop solar has a bias towards homeowners while nuclear power has a bias towards large centralised power companies. Loomio has deliberate built-in biases towards "collaborative decision-making".

I think Linked Open Data has a bias towards individual users, "managed trust" groups and the commons, and away from monopolistic platform providers.

One part of Linked Open Data is using standard vocabularies to make applications interoperable. This is like the technical version of "shared understanding" but for machines!

TK

Tibor Katelbach Tue 5 Aug 2014 8:55AM

Life starts by a link
so I'll start in this conversation as my link to this group :-)
here's one of the standard vocabularies for many things
https://schema.org/docs/full.html

in open source movements it is recommended to use, as much as possible, field names and description types, as a way to start sharing standard namings for anything we specify and describe.

If we all share the way we call things, things can be compared, put together, compiled, joined, mixed up..etc
On the other hand when similar things have a different names it's almost impossible to know they are the same.

it's standardisation to strengthen diversity :-)
since these ontologies are open to contribution of new properties

TH

Timothy Holborn Wed 5 Oct 2016 10:37AM

working on https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/1337 and am interested in collaborative assistances :)

BH

Bob Haugen Tue 5 Aug 2014 10:27AM

This is an important topic to discuss in some detail, which, as we know, is where the devil lurks.

One of the details that I do not yet understand is the full use of linked data. (I mean, I understand what people are saying about it, but I do not yet understand from experience.)

I understand about interoperability and message-communication between peers. But http://linkeddata.org/ says "Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data..."

I understand from that the emergence of a layer above individual Web pages, which they often depict in network diagrams, as in http://lod-cloud.net/versions/2011-09-19/lod-cloud.html. (Although that diagram, curiously, links stuff that has been centralized into http://datahub.io - and the links take you to pages on that site, not to the original sources. Wonder why...)

So do we foresee uses of some kind of overview in OpenApps? What would it do for us? @tiborkatelbach says "things can be compared, put together, compiled, joined, mixed up..etc". What are some examples of what we could do like that?

And what other uses of linked data have I not even thought of yet?

I am asking these questions for my own understanding, but also because I want to tell a compelling story about linked data and the importance of openness in that respect to some friends in academia who don't get it at all yet.

BH

Bob Haugen Tue 5 Aug 2014 11:02AM

Another of the details to discuss is that many of the supposedly-authoritative sources of linked data also have biases. For example, http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-org/

It is biased toward internal organization charts in hierarchical companies. It will not work for value networks or any other kind of P2P organization. Or even traditional company supply chains and value systems.
What do we do about that?

And that's not the only one. Schema.org also has a bias, although I can't quite put my finger on it yet. Seems like one of those everything-including-the-kitchen-sink collections that happens when a group of stakeholders wants to include everybody's contribution. Which is nice for them, but you were not a stakeholder, it may not work for you, and it's not very logical ontologically. One of the problems is that many of the nodes in the tree have cross-relationships, like SellAction and BuyAction. So it should be a network, not a tree.

TK

Tibor Katelbach Tue 5 Aug 2014 11:03AM

“things can be compared, put together, compiled, joined, mixed up..etc”
"semantic web and linkeddata standards" simply mean using a common vocabulary

so in different contexts (websites, applications..) when talking about the same thing, ex: 3 websites talking about "Cucumbers", a robot can figure it out thanks to the common vocabulary, linking those 3 talks to a unique instance Cucumber.
By using the common language those three sites are working towards inter-connectivity opening up to a larger picture like who are the cucumber experts, cucumber images, cucumber species ...etc
LinkedData gives
- a context to things
- a hierarchy or a parenthood to things
- helps organize and classify things
and much more

BH

Bob Haugen Tue 5 Aug 2014 11:22AM

@tiborkatelbach - thanks. Can you (or anybody else) think of practical examples in an OpenApp situation? For example, the OpenApp roadmap plans to have Loomio and Cobudget be the first apps to be interconnected. How would linked data be used in that context?

TK

Tibor Katelbach Tue 5 Aug 2014 11:39AM

sorry dont pay attention to my previous post thought there were discussion about this.

if both projects are structured using semanticWeb and LD they'll automatically understand each other because they'll be using the same words.
For example when talking about a Project , if in both cases a project is described using DOAP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOAP
Then they'll easily be able to pick and use whatever the need work with. the access to the information is done using an API.

Combining

- an open API
- Semantic Web
- Linked Data
give you a real Open App
:-)

LF

Lynn Foster Tue 5 Aug 2014 12:53PM

Here is a use case, which I think is real, but others can correct if not:

Let's say there are person, group, and association data (to simplify for this example, this can be associations between people and groups). The data lives on different servers, let's say Enspiral, Sensorica, and Mikorizal. Each of these servers has an instance of the Person and Group apps, which uses and exposes linked data which has the same ontology.

Each piece of data has to have a system of record (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_record), and anything else is a cached copy. So, Mikorizal is my primary "space" and my person data lives there (system of record). Let's say I am a contributor to Enspiral and Sensorica. I'm thinking my association to Enspiral lives on the Enspiral server and my association to Sensorica lives on the Sensorica server. So, Enspiral and Sensorica Group apps need to get my person data from Mikorizal whenever they need it, or cache it on their servers? And at least need to cache the identifier?

And whatever non-identifier data is cached needs to be updated using some protocol, perhaps triggered by change to the system of record?

Is this real or am I missing something I should know about linked data? What is the mechanism for apps to retrieve linked data from other places when they need it? What is the mechanism to update cached data? How would identifiers get formed? URLs? (There are many Lynn Fosters.) If so, what if I want to move my system of record person data to another server and instance of Person app?

These are the things my perhaps-overly-detail-oriented brain wonders. :) Thanks!

BH

Bob Haugen Tue 5 Aug 2014 5:48PM

Maybe I should explain a bit about where I am coming from in my linked data questions. I understand the sales pitch. But the sales pitch has been pitched for 15 years. The original pitchers are tired and disappointed. See
http://www.mkbergman.com/1771/a-decade-in-the-trenches-of-the-semantic-web/
The stuff never took off the way they hoped.

Now, sometimes new ideas take that long to be adopted. But the pitch has changed over time, too: from capital S Semantic Web to little s semantic web to JSON-LD to just use plain JSON and link to a context document:
http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/001984.html

So there's some friction and pretty constant push back. Even the editor of the JSON-LD spec complains about the big S Semantic Web.
http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/

I'm not coming from any of those viewpoints. I'd like to see the stuff work. But I want to think about how it will work in our context, and what we will do with it, in some excruciating detail.

P.S. I don't mean this as criticism for overview-type responses, they are also useful. I was not clear about where I was coming from. Trying to be more clear now.

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