I have been very honoured to be invited to lead off a workshop session at the European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC). This workshop is a radical initiative to change the way we think about information. Here’s the description: http://sepublica.mywikipaper.org/drupal/
There is much controversy in the world of publishing and semantic publishing needs to both create waves in publishing and to ride the waves of change approaching in the world of publishing. We therefore invite statements for presentation at a discussion session at SePublica 2013 at ESWC in Montpellier on 26 May 2013.
We want radical, controversal and polemical positions to be articulated about semantic publishing and how we should achieve semantic publishing of scholarly works, data and all sorts of stuff. To be presented, statements must be relevant, legal and not too offensive(as judged by the workshop organisers).
All acccepted statements wil be presented. Submission will be through easychair; all accepted polemics will be
published before the meeting on the Knowledgeblog platform (http://www.knowledgeblog.org), where they will be permanently archived, and open for public comments. Submissions should be limited to 500 words. We can accept submissions in most formats, including Word, simple HTML (nothing in the header, no active content) or Latex (again the simpler the better). Presentations on the day wil be restricted to one slide that will be presented for two minutes (we will do this via timed slides) – all slide presentations must be submitted in advance. Presentations will be followed by a vivid discussion.
Illustrating what we would like to have…
Here’s To The Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world – are the ones who DO !” (I [AlexanderGC?] believe this is from Steve Jobs, but I am not sure about the right atribution of sentence.)
Welcome to SEPUBLICA 2013
For over 350 years, scientific publications have been fundamental to advancing science. Since the first scholarly journals, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (of London) and the Journal de Sçavans, scientific papers have been the primary, formal means by which scholars have communicated their work, e.g., hypotheses, methods, results, experiments, etc. Advances in technology have made it possible for the scientific article to adopt electronic dissemination channels, from paper-based journals to purely electronic formats. However, In spite of improvements in the distribution, accessibility and retrieval of information, little has changed in the publishing industry so far. The Web has succeeded as a dissemination platform for scientific and non-scientific papers, news, and communication in general; however, most of that information remains locked up in discrete digital documents that are replicates of their print ancestors; without machine-interpretable content they lack the exploitation we have begun to expect from other data. Semantic enhancements to scholarly works would expose both the content of those works and the implicit discourse between those works. Scholarly data and documents are of most value when they are interconnected rather than independent.
This is a tremendous vision and I am deeply honoured to be asked to spark it off. I’ll try and indicate over the next 3-4 days some avenues. Polemics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemic ) are:
a contentious argument that is intended to establish the truth of a specific understanding and the falsity of the contrary position. Polemics are mostly seen in arguments about very controversial topics.
My current title is
“How do we make Science Semantic”?
But even as I write I am seeing new challenges and opportunities and these posts are exploring this.
So we are challenging the way that we communicate “publishing” and there is much to challenge. Not many areas have been unaffected by the Web revolution, but scholarly publishing is one of those (the publishers have simply shipped the printing bill to the readers). In 1994 I was privileged to hear TimBL at CERN/WWW1 setting out the semantic web vision and it transformed my life. I assumed it would transform science, but it hasn’t. And that’s my first and explicit polemic.
Science, with the exception of parts of bioscience has not adopted semantics even after 20 years of opportunity. I’m not sure why, though I have revised my ideas (downward) about conservatism in academic institutions. There is a glowing opportunity – Tim can see it, I can see it, and a number of my collaborators can see it, but the vast bulk of science is untouched. Ironic that CERN was the birthplace of the Web.
It becomes clear that semantics is about revolution. The semantic web potentially empowers the individual over top-down organizations. Semantics creates human-machine organisms that communicate with other human-machine organisms. That changes the structure of society and the nature of humanity. And every year that revolution is stalled is a year of building tensions.
The primary theme is publishing. TimBL envisaged a system where everyone could be author, publisher and reader. Pre-1993 electronic (or any) publishing was an arcane art. In 1993 NCSA changed that, with the Mosaic browser and even more importantly NSCA HTTPD. My web server became my own personal radio station – I could publish to the world and my only challenge – a fair one – was whether the world would listen. We see this now in blogs, of course, but blogs do not capture the true essence of the semantic revolution. They are critical in establishing the new democracy and reshaping society, but in a relatively conventional technical manner.
But today the critical polemic is digital freedom or digital slavery. There are huge interests attempting to control us – to limit our activities, to tell us what to think, to filter what we say. And for this reason much of the semantic web is stalled. For me the biggest developments in semantic information have been with Wikipedia, Open Street map and other extra-academic organizations. And, of course, the Open Knowledge Foundation w here the practice of semantic information is a core part of our practice.
And yes, we must have the crazies. Socrates was a crazy. Aaron Swartz was a crazy. TimBL was a crazy.
The most important message is that single people with a passion can change the world. It’s never been easier. Crazies don’t need confidence – they already have it. But they need help, and if I can persuade people they should follow crazies, then I will have succeeded.
If you sit back and wait for the world to change, it won’t be your world.
[NOTE: I have been very busy hacking AMI2 – a PDF2Semantic tool – and hope to show at least some of it. It’s taken just over a year so far. I must be really crazy. But I can afford to be and I have a duty to be.]