( shared ) vision for "distributed database using semantic linked-data structure", and current tool development

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

I feel like cross posting , making a connection between those two lists

http://groups.google.com/group/global-survival

http://groups.google.com/group/building-a-distributed-decentralized-internet

sharing Poor Richard's post as context :

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/building-a-distributed-decentralized-internet/0VkN7ETmuIc/discussion

including comments on

https://www.facebook.com/groups/145538675490320/

and recent updates in relation to Netention prototypes :

http://blog.automenta.com/2012/10/combining-netention-and-gss-into.html

http://blog.automenta.com/2012/10/netention-semantic-editor-design-options.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 11:44 AM
Subject: Introducing Poor Richard to the list, and his vision for "distributed database using semantic linked-data structure"
To: Poor Richard , global-...@googlegroups.com


Hi Poor Richard,

I wish to introduce you to people on the global survival list ,

so that they can perhaps react and complete the approach currently taken.

You can find more on http://automenta.com  , including http://automenta.com/netention

( netention - did Seth coin it ? - stands for a combination of "Network" and "Attention" - code in development , released in a open / libre approach by Seth and other coders on this list , with some various Prototypes shared on http://blog.automenta.com/  )

And I wish to share with the list your following Facebook post and comments :

Poor RichardP2P

I hope no one will mind if I indulge in a little visioneering here. I am imagining an information system of P2P practice and research. The P2P collaborative economy, free culture, and new commons movements are creating a lot of digital content. Most is in discursive and narrative form that is time consuming to read. Among this volume of content are case studies in a variety of formats (many very informal), business plans, proposals, and presumably many legal documents (charters, agreements, etc.).

I am imagining a semantic ontology according to which the key ideas and data of this content could be parsed and tagged to form a distributed database using semantic linked-data structures. This would help transition the collective knowledge base of the research, activist, and social entrepreneurial communities into a machine-readable, semantically linked, searchable form.

The P2P Foundation Wiki is an excellent searchable resource, and perhaps the semantic wiki extensions for the wiki engine could eventually be applied. "A semantic wiki is a wiki that has an underlying model of the knowledge described in its pages. Regular, or syntactic, wikis have structured text and untyped hyperlinks. Semantic wikis, on the other hand, provide the ability to capture or identify information about the data within pages, and the relationships between pages, in ways that can be queried or exported like a database."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_wiki

A fringe benefit of creating such data structures for existing content would be to provide common templates for future content creation and data collection.

Semantic wiki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Asemantic wikiis awikithat has an underlyingmodel of the knowledgedescribed in its pages. Regular, or syntactic, wikis have structured text and untypedhyperlinks. 

"You should be able to easily select a view where all that information is included."

"farther towards creating open linked-data structures"

"I am focused on the ontology design first, but perhaps there are tools that cover both bases that I'm not aware of yet."

"Poor Richard Another part of the "research information system" I am visioneering is pattern detection and recognition. An ontology gives us set of semantically charged patterns. Then what we need is a pattern language with which to parse existing content and match it with our ontology. I am thinking of something like the "regular expressions" used in the old unix text editors or in the Pearl and Awk programming languages I once used.http://encyclopedia.tfd.com/Regular+expressions "

to which I replied :

 this is a vision we share. Programming work has been on its way. I invite you to have a look athttp://automenta.com/netention, and to join this listhttps://groups.google.com/group/global-survival

I wish to share the following

A phrase from Seth I wish to share in this context :

"I've explained to people that Netention is not just a product - but that it refers to the evolution of human language into new semantic and syntactical domains of higher expressiveness and effectiveness in programming reality itself, not just software.  so anything that can help this goal ought to be part of the project, as long as it doesn't complexify it."

[Poor Richard]

Dante,

Not much action up in here (Next Net) lately, but thanks for cross posting!

PR

[Poor Richard]

Dante,

The proposed netention semantic editor would be truly awesome! Not that I'm any expert on the topic, but that is the first tool of its kind I have even seen a coherent description of. I would suggest that such an editor should have easy switching between several views including an outline view and a semantic graph view as well as the wysiwyg document content.

At the risk of complexifying further, is there any way in hell that a great editor like LibreOffice (a free and open source office suite descended from OpenOffice.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice ) could be forked and retrofitted with semantic functions? Then we'd have semantic spreadsheets, outlines, etc., too. (LibreOffice Online will allow for the use of LibreOffice through a web browser by using the canvas element. Development is ongoing and it has not yet been released)

PR


On Friday, October 19, 2012 6:49:07 AM UTC-5, Dante-Gabryell Monson wrote:

[Fabio Cecin]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 4:49 AM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com> wrote:

A phrase from Seth I wish to share in this context :

"I've explained to people that Netention is not just a product - but that it refers to the evolution of human language into new semantic and syntactical domains of higher expressiveness and effectiveness in programming reality itself, not just software.  so anything that can help this goal ought to be part of the project, as long as it doesn't complexify it."

It seems that that's the sort of stuff I was looking for.

This makes building a decentralized, democratic (as in "for, by and of the people") Internet and a decentralized, democratic software ecosystem that more meaningful.

Instead of being passive users of the "cultures" and "systems" we're born into, which we'll proceed to blindly run though our spiffy new, guaranteed democratic "series of tubes" (made of hardware and software) we can also start coding and testing our own cultures and systems (I mean "cultures and systems" in a "network of brain software" or "network of minds" sense).

The point is to enable each individual to relate in new, saner, perhaps simpler ways to others and the world. Even if the overall amount of knowledge or total mental overhead required to pull this off is large. But that's why we have automated "mental" systems, a.k.a. software, with all the reasoning subcomponents ["apps," "operating systems," etc.], memory banks ["databases"] and so on: so we can concentrate our human minds on what's more important and leave all of the boring "paperwork" and tracking to the machines -- /our/ machines, that is, of each and every one of us, not of an elite.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Fabio

[Poor Richard]

Fabio, I agree, sir.

 PR

[Mark Adam]

>On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Fabio Cecin <fce...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 4:49 AM, Dante-Gabryell Monson
> <dante....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> A phrase from Seth I wish to share in this context :
>>
>> "I've explained to people that Netention is not just a product - but that
>> it refers to the evolution of human language into new semantic and
>> syntactical domains of higher expressiveness and effectiveness in
>> programming reality itself, not just software. so anything that can help
>> this goal ought to be part of the project, as long as it doesn't complexify
>> it."
>>
>
> It seems that that's the sort of stuff I was looking for.

This is cool. My feeling is that goal of the programming language art
is find the highest "Kolmogorov factor" for compressing the human
desire for compact, elegant expressiveness into actual, runnable code.
To me, so far, the Python programming language (especially with
VPython), has formed the highest value of any programming language.

Glad to see some similar thoughts.

MarkJ
Pangaia Project