Ed -- thanks for the link -- you and Dorothy have written a tremendously clear and useful piece
Sheila

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ed Summers
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2013 9:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] rdf serialization

On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 3:45 PM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is hard. The Semantic Web (and RDF) attempt at codifying knowledge using a strict syntax, specifically a strict syntax of triples. It is very difficult for humans to articulate knowledge, let alone codifying it. How realistic is the idea of the Semantic Web? I wonder this not because I don't think the technology can handle the problem. I say this because I think people can't (or have great difficulty) succinctly articulating knowledge. Or maybe knowledge does not fit into triples?

I think you're right Eric. I don't think knowledge can be encoded completely in triples, any more than it can be encoded completely in finding aids or books.

One thing that I (naively) wasn't fully aware of when I started dabbling the Semantic Web and Linked Data is how much the technology is entangled with debates about the philosophy of language. These debates play out in a variety of ways, but most notably in disagreements about the nature of a resource (httpRange-14) in Web Architecture. Shameless plug: Dorothea Salo and I tried to write about how some of this impacts the domain of the library/archive [1].

One of the strengths of RDF is its notion of a data model that is behind the various serializations (xml, ntriples, json, n3, turtle, etc). I'm with Ross though: I find it much to read rdf as turtle or json-ld than it is rdf/xml.

//Ed

[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.4591