creating common ground for uri meaning using socially constructed web sites john black, deltek...

Creating Common Ground for URI Meaning Using Socially Constructed Web sites

John Black, Deltek Systems, Inc.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 2

Introduction• In my paper, and in this presentation, I address this problem:• How can we create a common ground, i.e., a common interpretation

of a URI reference, that is shared by all agents that use it and is also accessible to machine processing?

• Common ground includes social conventions. This is the knowledge of what is meant by the names or words used when two or more agents communicate.

• It takes two. The identification of a URI with some entity must be declared and then agents must learn what is identified by a URI. It is publishers that create them but it is clients that learn these identifications.

• My position is that we can do this by using the technology of socially constructed web-sites, sites such as http://del.icio.us.

http://del.icio.us/


Demo of Naming• There will be a test later:• I do hereby grant Harry Halpin the additional name of

http://ournamesfor.us/names/IRW2006GoodFellow <- a name

– Do you learn it? Raise your hand if you did. Now all of us share an interpretation of this URI. We share a Common Ground.

– What if someone didn’t pay attention? It names no one for that person.– The naming project would have to be repeated for him.– What if someone refused to go along? They won’t use it as a name.

• Here is another name for someone: http://ournamesfor.us/names/IRW2006GodFather <- a name

– What about now? if I don’t tell you or you don’t hear it or you don’t accept it then it names nothing for you.


A Basis for Common Ground – Herbert Clark• proposition p is in the common ground for members of community C

if and only if: every member of C has information that basis b holds;

b indicates to every member of C that every member of C has information that b holds;

b indicates to members of C that p

• The definition is reflexive, but avoids an infinite regress of messages and acknowledgements.


The Grounding of Common Ground• http://del.icio.us is a social bookmarking web site.• And del.icio.us is a basis for common ground as described above.• Co-presence. When someone posts an entry to del.icio.us, it is

instantly available (present) to anyone who wants to ping the server just then. This is similar to a public declaration like I just made.

• On del.icio.us the propositions are tags, words associated with a web site by someone, and then repeated by others, essentially a weak form of a classification. My demo was of a naming.

• A naming project (or performative) is formed from an adjacency pair, a naming and an adoption of the name.


The Three Parts of a Naming• 1. Agents, at least two.• 2. A naming project (or performative) is formed of an adjacency pair

A naming proposal part

A naming adoption part

• 3. An object or entity to be named as identified by a description, an index, or a depiction.


Grounding in the World• A fingerprint is something that a machine can input using sensors

It can do it autonomously. It does not need to be connected to the network.

Each fingerprint is unique to an individual.

• The classic literary means of identification is the definite description.• Another proposal is Web Proper Names a means of pointing out an

entity using an annotated web search.• The MD5 hash of a message identifies it uniquely.• I pointed to Harry. My pointing and his appearance formed a visual

fingerprint for you.


URIs as Names• Both the Web and the Semantic Web use URIs as names for almost

everything.• What is a name formally?• According to RDF Semantics:


RDF Semantics• W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004 – sections:• 0.1 – “Exactly what is considered to be the 'meaning' of an assertion

in RDF … in some broad sense may depend on many factors, including social conventions, … Much of this meaning will be inaccessible to machine processing…”

• 0.3 – “A name is a URI reference or a literal. These are the expressions that need to be assigned a meaning by an interpretation.”

• 1.2 – “The semantics treats all RDF names as expressions which denote. The things denoted are called 'resources',.…treated here as synonymous with 'entity', i.e. as a generic term for anything in the universe of discourse.”


RDF Semantics - continued• W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004 – sections:• 1.3 - “…an interpretation provides just enough information … to fix

the truth-value (true or false) of any ground RDF triple. It does this by specifying for each URI reference, what it is supposed to be a name of…”

• 1.3 – “RDF has two kinds of denotation: names denote things in the universe, and sets of triples denote truth-values…”

• 1.4 – “…this means that any assertion of a graph implicitly asserts that all the names in the graph actually refer to something in the world.”


The Namer• The namer is essential because it is his, hers, or it's agency that

makes the posting of the triple a performative, a project, a naming. • A performative is an action with a purpose, a goal, and agents are,

by definition, animated entities with a purpose. • Otherwise it is just another web posting, which could be

experimental, example, error, farce, fraud or anything else.


Joint Activity• In Clark’s theory of language use, naming is a joint activity. • Proposing a name is one-half of it - a participatory act.• Here is how we can represent it:

(1) Agent-A and Agent-B are jointly performing a naming.

(2) Agent-A is performing the name proposal as part of (1).

(3) Agent-B is performing the name adoption as part of (1).

• Both parts are essential and both are provided by del.icio.us as (1).• As Wittgenstein says, “my right hand can’t give my left hand money”• Demo:

http://ournamesfor.us/name/IRW2006GodFather names the person on this card.


Social Meaning Requires Societies• The social meaning created in this manner is not stored anywhere.

Specifically, it is not the referent of a URI. • It is more like the V-shape a flock of geese forms as it flies.• The V-shape can’t be created by a single goose.• All the geese must act as individuals and do their part as part of the

flock.• Social meaning is what will emerge spontaneously and ephemerally

among communities of agents that coordinate activity around their common ground.


A Calculus of Communities• The communities created around the common ground of URI

references would not be fixed. From two agents to global, but usually inbetween.

Since every URI forms a separate community there would be many overlapping or concentric communities.

• There is no need for there to be only one of these socially constructed ontology sites. No global registry. Some groups that might run one to create a vocabularies based on:

Nationality, Residence, Education, Occupation, Employment, Hobby, Language, Religion, Politics, Ethnicity, Subculture, Cohort, Gender.

• But even one person might run such a common ground server.


A Calculus of Communities - continued• In Peter Mika’s paper “Ontologies are Us”, he uses graph theory for

his calculus. But there are differences between his conception and mine: He uses the triple (actor, concept, instance) – I replace concept with a

performative, in this case a naming.

He tries to aggregate and analyze. This is good, but unless the results are reported back to the communities he’s analyzing and are adopted by them, he has not contributed to the common ground. His results remain private.


Google vs. del.icio.us• Swoogle is semantic web search engine, but consider this:• You can use Google to search for able sellers, and you can use it to

search for willing buyers, and you may be able to find a precise match through analysis of the two sets. But this would not create a contract for the sale of goods. Such a contract must be both offered and accepted by the respective parties. Both agents must sign it. So it is with social meaning.

• No amount of aggregating, reasoning, or merging can, by itself, turn independently created propositions into common knowledge.


Where is this Heading?• Consensus Building by Machine Agents

This might have implications for EAI or for web services repositories.

• Socially Oriented Queries what is the URI-name adopted by agent Agent-ID for this KR-ID?

which URI-name is used by the most users for this KR-ID?

what are all the URI-names that have been jointly adopted by the set y of agents – this would give us the usable vocabulary of a community of agents.

• Current State of the Activity After we establish a community around common ground in ontologies,

even instances of conversations contribute to it.

Every conversation will then be unique, along with any meaning


Conclusion• Naming, referring, identifying are joint activities that create the

common ground for other communications.• The results – the meanings – emerge spontaneously and ephemerally

in societies of agents that participate in these activities.• Some minimal abstraction of this can be automated.• Information systems and computer applications based on automated

common ground will be able to integrate and interact more effectively.

• My paper located at: HTML: http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/irw2006/jblack.html

PDF: http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/irw2006/jblack.pdf


ReferencesJ. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962.

T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, and O. Lassila. The semantic web Scientific American, May 2001

J. J. Carroll, P. Hayes, C. Bizer, and P. Stickler. Named Graphs, Provenance and Trust http://www2005.org/cdrom/docs/p613.pdf, 2005.

H. H. Clark. Using Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996.

H. Halpin and H. S. Thompson Web Proper Names: Naming Referents on the Web http://www.webpropernames.org/paper/, 2005

L. Ding, T. Finin, A. Joshi, R. Pan, R. S. Cost, Y. Peng, P. Reddivari, V. C. Doshi, and J. Sachs. Swoogle: A Search and Metadata Engine for the Semantic Web Proceedings of the Thirteenth ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, ACM Press, November 2004

S. A. Kripke. Naming and Necessity Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972.

D. Lewis. Convention - A Philosophical Study Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA, 2002.

L. Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations. (Translated by Anscombe, G.E.M.) Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1953


Demo test:

• Who is this? http://ournamesfor.us/names/IRW2006GoodFellow

• But who is this? http://ournamesfor.us/names/IRW2006GodFather

creating common ground for uri meaning using socially constructed web sites john black, deltek...

Documents

deltek systems

naming proposal

naming adoption

naming project

demo of naming

common interpretation

usnamesirw2006goodfellow

constructed websites