Google's own OSCOMAK-like project: Knol
Paul D. Fernhout
Semantic MediaWiki video).
Now I remember seeing Knol mentioned on slashdot:
Google's "Knol" Reinvents Wikipedia
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/12/14/1323221.shtml
Encouraging people to contribute knowledge
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
an example of a knol
http://www.google.com/help/knol_screenshot.html
Knol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
"Knol is a project planned by Google for user-generated articles on topics
ranging from "scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical
and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it
instructions."[3] It was announced on December 13, 2007. Knol pages are
"meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the
first time will want to read", according to Udi Manber, a Vice President of
Engineering at Google.[3] The term knol, named after a "unit of
knowledge",[4] refers to both the project and an article in the project.[3]
Several experts see Knol as Google's attempt to compete with Wikipedia.[5]
The site is currently in private beta,[3] and requests to create "knols" are
by invitation only. ... Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for
Digital Democracy, raised similar concerns: "At the end of the day, there's
a fundamental conflict between the business Google is in and its social
goals. What you're seeing here, slowly, is Google embracing an
advertising-driven model, in which money will have a greater impact on what
people have ready access to.""
Other Google services make it hard or impossible (legally) to download all
the data it a service (example: there is no way I know of to easily download
all the posts in this group without a spider program that may violate
Google's terms of service, whereas Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/
offers easy download links). That is perhaps to increase AdSense revenue. I
assume Knol will do the same -- meaning all the Knol data (or a subset) will
not be legally downloadable for client-side analysis (as I want to do with
OSCOMAK to design industrial ecologies).
This also implies Google would not help, or might even impede, OpenVirgle
and OSCOMAK -- if my speculations are correct, since they in a sense compete
with Knol. Maybe Google really is Captain Amazing after all to the Cassanova
Frankenstein of profit. :-(
I'm feeling quite the April fool now, not about Virgle, but about having
taken this long to see this and extended Google this much good will
afterwards to suggest using all their services. :-( I'm bummed and I hope I
am mistaken as to their directions. And I can see now firsthand the
anti-trust calls to split the search division from the content division.
And there is this, too. implying things may turn nasty:
"Wikipedia 3.0: The End of Google?"
http://evolvingtrends.wordpress.com/2006/06/26/wikipedia-30-the-end-of-google/
"The Semantic Web (or Web 3.0) promises to “organize the world’s
information” in a dramatically more logical way than Google can ever achieve
with their current engine design. This is specially true from the point of
view of machine comprehension as opposed to human comprehension.The Semantic
Web requires the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to
produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about
information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords. However,
the Semantic Web, which is still in a development phase where researchers
are trying to define the best and most usable design models, would require
the participation of thousands of knowledgeable people over time to produce
those domain-specific ontologies necessary for its functioning. ... The
emergence of a Wikipedia 3.0 (as in Web 3.0, aka Semantic Web) that is built
on the Semantic Web model will herald the end of Google as the Ultimate
Answer Machine. It will be replaced with “WikiMind” which will not be a mere
search engine like Google is but a true Global Brain: a powerful pan-domain
inference engine, with a vast set of ontologies (a la Wikipedia 3.0)
covering all domains of human knowledge, that can reason and deduce answers
instead of just throwing raw information at you using the outdated concept
of a search engine."
Kalesh was so prescient to set up an outside server. Looks like we may need
one for sure. As in _Voyage from Yesteryear_, the scarcity and post-scarcity
worlds are colliding -- even within Google itself and right on this list.
Anyway, I need to take a break for a day or two to do taxes; this list has
been a great positive way to procrastinate on that and the inevitable
sending of a check about half of which it seems goes to the war racket. :-(
--Paul Fernhout