New Publishing and the Semantic Web

Building an Open Publishing ArchitectureMid-Year Postgraduate Research Conference 2006

School Of Global Studies Social Science & Planning, RMIT University

Liam Magee and Gus Gollings

Background

ARC Linkage Project – impact of new technologies on publishing

Partners: RMIT, Australian Government, FujiXerox

Gus and Liam – researchers, doing PhD’s on technology, information, classification systems and society…

One aspect of research – impact of new technologies on information communities (producers, brokers and consumers of information)

Hypothesis of an information architecture for new publishing – ‘Open Publishing Architecture’

Building an Open Publishing Architecture

To define a case for open document publishing - basic form of infrastructure for:

• individuals

• corporations

• communities

• government

To construct a high-level architecture that supplies:

• longevity

• openness

• metadata capacity

across the publishing activities

The Argument and Philosophy

Publishing is an important social practice: formalizing and firming ideas.

It is currently in the hands of gatekeepers.

It is largely agnostic of new technological horizons.

Can publishing really be open?

Simply using open documents format itself might limit innovation, for the standard constrains functionality?

Threats to ‘Open Information’ in a Digital Age

Cost of participation in digital content creationRegulation / control of content production (content creation

tools)Regulation / control of content distribution (historical

consolidation of publishers)Regulation / control of content consumption (search engines,

browsers, devices)

Threats to ‘Open Information’ in a Digital Age

Obsolescence of contentInteroperability of content and content descriptions

(metadata)Endless replication of digital divide – superceded

technologies ‘trickle down’ to developing communitiesPerceived dilution of quality from ‘mass vanity publishing’

(blogging)Loss of historicity of textual production with digital

production / reproduction

What do we mean by ‘Architecture’?

‘Architecture’ as metaphor – used to describe both:• an information system• a technology system

That is, how information is created, transmitted, aggregated, edited, composed, retrieved, presented, disseminated (social practices)…

And what technical mechanisms are used to accomplish this (technical practices)…

Project straddles social and computer sciences…

Building an Open Publishing Architecture

Holy trinity of:

- standards (language constraints),

- social practice (how you do it),

- tools (software/hardware)

Anyone is free to pursue this architecture:

- companies

- communities

- individuals

- 3rd party operators

Arriving at an Open Publishing Architecture

History: By looking back at how publishing and knowledge management has been organized in the past and present

Technology: By looking at the technological horizons for extensive networked computers

History: Publishing & Knowledge Mastery

Desire to Know Everything

– Aristotle's argument with Plato: that knowledge is empirical not abstract.

– Massive documentation projects from the past: Aquinas, Diderot, Samual Johnson Dictionary, Project Gutenberg, "Thesaurus Linguae Graecae”, "Thesaurus Linguae Latinae”, Buddhist Pali Canon, Emperor's Library and Chinese Classics

History: Publishing & Knowledge Mastery

– Paul Otlet, 1935Man would no longer need documentation if he were assimilated

into an omniscient being - as with God himself. But to a less ultimate degree, a technology will be created acting at a distance and combining radio, X-rays, cinema and microscopic photography. Everything in the universe, and everything of man, would be registered at a distance as it was produced. In this way a moving image of the world will be established, a true mirror of his memory. From a distance, everyone will be able to read text, enlarged and limited to the desired subject, projected on an individual screen. In this way, everyone from his armchair will be able to contemplate creation, as a whole or in certain of its parts. (p. 390)

History: Publishing & Knowledge Mastery

Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau:1992-4 World Wide Web

As we experience it today, the internet is crashing into one billion fixed line users.

Technology: Network Transmission

Web has attracted spectacular amount of content

Managing that content is hard (problems which Google tackles)

Another approach to answering these problems is an arcane technology the Semantic Web

Technology: Network Transmission

Semantic Web is:

…is an extension of the current web, where information is given well defined meaning

…enables people and computers to work in cooperation

…where the current web is a web of pages, the Semantic Web is a web of data

Technology: Network Transmission

Current World Wide Web has HTML to markup its pages

Semantic Web has markup technologies of its own, which allow for the computer readable descriptions of the relationships between things

Technology: Network Transmission

Whereas the Existing Web simply defines ‘links to’ generic resources, the Semantic Web specifies the meaning of the

relationships between, and the nature of, resources.

What does an architecture look like?

Document: blueprints for a digital publishing environment:

Description of business processes – best practices

Outline of components – tools for content creation, management, archival, recomposition, distribution

Recommendations for standards

Goals of an Architecture (‘SCAM’ Principles)

Content data, and data about content (metadata) to be transparent and human-readable (Principle of Standardisation)

Ease, low-cost and replaceable components (Principle of Commoditisation)

Content to be storable and retrievable (Principle of Archivability)

Content to be editable (Principle of Manipulation)

Building an Open Publishing Architecture

Questions:

- Fledgling theory (ready to be shot down…)

- Architecture – necessary metaphor? (connotations of ‘weighty’, ‘unweildy’, ‘top-heavy’)

- Is this a critical problem (or a solution in search of a problem)?

- How will such an architecture be devised? Disseminated? Implemented? Monitored?