The Decentralization

of KnowledgeHarry Halpin (W3C/MIT)

Alexandre Monnin (Inria, expert Etalab)

The Hidden History of Google

Cybernetics is Not Enough

Putting the Symbols Back in the

Machine Artificial Intelligence, LISP, semantic networks

Knowledge Representation Hypothesis

Any mechanically embodied intelligent process will be

comprised of structural ingredients that a) we as external

observers naturally take to represent a propositional

account of the knowledge that the overall process

exhibits, and b) independent of such external

semantical attribution, play a formal but causal and

essential role in engendering the behavior that manifests

that knowledge [Smith, 1982].

The Frame Problem, Issues with what's

in a Link and AI Winter

After the AI winter: The Semantic Web

or Carnap onward

Carnap McCarthy/Hayes Berners-

Lee/Hayes

AN intellectual genealogy

Logical positivism

(metrology)Logical AI

Semantic Web/Linked

Data

A tale of three encyclopedias

Universal Encyclopedia of Unified Science

CYC Wikipedia/DBpedia

The Web and decentralized knowledge

The Web, the Semantic Web and

Wikipedia/DBpedia

First principle behind the Web : anyone can designate anything (any thing,

any « resource »).

The Web, the Semantic Web and

Wikipedia/DBpedia

First principle behind the Semantic

Web/Linked Data : the AAA principle.

« Anyone can say Anything about Anything »,

meaning that anyone can designate any

resource with a URI, describe it with any resource

(with other URIs) and link it to any resource

(again, thanks to even more URIs!).

The Web, the Semantic Web and

Wikipedia/DBpedia

how do we come to an agreement, where do we find the constituents of a

shared world? Where do we find a « parliament of things » (Latour)?

Short answer: Wikipedia for the Web, DBpedia for the Web of Data.

A centralized platform for decentralized contributions

The re-centralization of the Web of knowledge

A parliament of things?

No, Google’s Knowledge Graph :

You can’t link to its resources (reuses the

common knowledge of Wikipedia/Dbpedia

without reinforcing the virtuous circle that

made them possible)

Controversy is treated as a disposable

defect

Fueled by Wikidata, a Google-funded

Wikimedia project to produce structured

data for the Knowledge Graph (a trojan

horse?)

Ontological democracy vs corporation

objectivity

The Semantic Web?

No, one ontology for all: schema.org

Created by Ramanathan Guha (one of the

brains behind CYC and RDF)

One general ontology (enacts new worlds)

for all domains

ran by a handful of corporation(s)

…

Reclaim the Web, re-de-centralize the Web: not just a telco issue

A deeply, democratic and philosophical one

#webwewant