David garcia on Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:33:45 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Critique of the "Semantic Web" |
Thanks you Florian for helping to clear up this fog of conflicting terminologies. For those of us less confident in the realm of automated search and classification. I wonder if you could address the current status of the Dewey Decimal Classification system in this context? It's value in physical libraries was that it is not spatial but relational (it is indirect not a direct reference to a book's location). So you are not told where to go but where the book is in relationship to other books. For some of us setting out on knowledge journeys before the era of search engines might like me have found this very 19th century method of classification - which combined a numbering system with classification by topic very valuable as a mode of orientation, Neither cosmology nor ontology. It is still going strong today as its rough categories seem to have been remarkably scalable given the vast number of new subjects have been comfortably accommodated. So despite Borges's wonderfully poetic puncturing of the folly and hubris in taking our categoristions of knowledge too seriously, some standardized relational way of mapping our knowledge landscape seems to work quite well in practice for physical libraries. So I guess I am asking is whether the "Semantic web" is an attempt to do a Dewey Decimal Classification for the "era of the web. And (if this assumption is not mistaken) given the continued value and robustness of Dewey why we must assume that this effort will be futile? I am sure that I am asking a very naive questions, but for those of us who are unsure how automated search differs in principle from searching for things in libraries the distinction between DDC and automated search technologies and (further) how this relates to the ambition of the semantic web efforts might be illuminating. Once again thanks. David Garcia # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org