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okay here we go my name is James Pitts
and this is about semantic aetherium and
when you talk about semantic or semantic
technologies like the Semantic Web
it starts with metadata so so what is
metadata it provides context to the data
that you have and so when you're marking
up HTML you're you're creating context
for the data that you've included in
your webpage and it in that context can
run very deep and regular metadata that
we usually deal with as HTML developers
it it's it's a bit of a burden when you
do it but if you want to go to something
like the Semantic Web it has it's a
quite a big endeavor so the Semantic Web
is proposed by Tim berners-lee
who created the web and when the person
who created the web proposed proposes a
new idea a new concept a new set of
standards were inclined to pay attention
to him because we're grateful and it's
he's a genius so a lot of people got
very excited and I drunk the kool-aid
myself I got extremely excited about it
and so he started with web of content
which is the current web and then he
would he expanded it to be a web of data
and a web of trust and as we all know
we're solving the trust aspect of this
and the deeper sense of what he's
talking about is that once you establish
all this context and once you know the
source of the context you you you create
something that's almost not so much of a
thinking vein but something that is
meaningful that that all the information
is connected together in a very formal
way and that can make that made a lot of
people very
sited and a w3c which which maintains
its standards of the web developed the
standards of the Semantic Web and many
many tools came out standards lots of
interesting diagrams like that
to describe how things connect together
but it largely failed and you'll find
many articles about how the Semantic Web
was a complete bust but the thing is
there there's there's a lot of standards
that are out there but they just weren't
useful for people in their a bit of a
burden to work with and famously cory
doctorow
even before the Semantic Web was really
formally a set of standards he actually
took on just metadata itself the whole
concept he said it's MIT a crap and it's
very snarky but it was very insightful
too he talked about insurmountable
obstacles lies laziness stupidity
impracticality and it's a great article
if you look it up the seven strongmen of
meta utopia we ourselves or utopians in
a way so we can learn a lot from people
who just simply say things like that
perhaps Tim berners-lee should have
listened to that a little bit but the
thing is even though Semantic Web is a
failure or perhaps not two people are
still working on it
um metadata is ubiquitous anyone who's
worked with webpages knows and the
simple fact is apps share data and that
data has important context and much of
the data as web developers know is is
embedded in HTML and that's the standard
Micro data API calls are out there and
the documentation behind it by API calls
can be considered metadata and that's in
its one of the reasons why we must
maintain great documentation and much of
this of the Semantic Web is out there
not really forming a full semantic web
not really forming something that
everyone uses but it's out there and it
it's useful for example wikipedia has
been convert
into a database and you can see wiki
data you can go in there and pull a lot
of data relate things together it's very
useful so often we use metadata without
really realizing it for example the
emails that you receive in Gmail about
your flight actually contain tags
metadata microbe data in there and
that's what Google will generate from
those from that Micro data and github
actions often when you do search results
you'll see these little info boxes which
are somewhat controversial Google grabs
this data from various places and
actually creates a summary much like
Wikipedia and yeah those are called info
boxes so the thing about there's a sort
of a conundrum about metadata in general
is if if you're if you're too loose
about it it it's you're not clear right
a famous lawyer said what you know what
is is what is the definition of is
sometimes we can be unclear so and it
can lead to ambiguity and if you over
structure data of course it's burdensome
and here's some well-known phonetic
characters if you think about the
personality people who keep correcting
you and saying you can't say it that way
you know this you can't do it that way
too much structure is annoying and
developers don't want to deal with it
right so let's go look at what the
Semantic Web is right highly formalized
metadata so it's it's very strict so
whether something conforms to to what
what your ontology is or not is really
clear it's layered on top of the open
web
lots of standards data and tools and
here's the things that it provides it's
really important is there's linkage and
there's lots of reference through your
eyes the other one is the descriptions
like how what things are and like
somebody's a person
what is a person well you might have a
resource that describes what a person is
sounds ridiculous but if you want to do
something more automated it might be
good to know this object as a person in
this object as an airplane and the
deeper side of it is reasoning that you
structure your data in a way that
something can reason about it
and so here's why this is what Tim
berners-lee
wanted and this is what he was proposing
this is why we all go through this this
work to build a Semantic Web which many
people didn't and ideas software agents
that's a big one the the notion was that
when if we all have the structured data
out there something could comprehend it
and create automated services for us
arrange airplane flights agents things
like that and I think I think one of the
more interesting aspects of it was like
an ecosystem a value chain of data if
all the data is more formally connected
you can you can build things on top of
it reliably and in a way that's one of
the great benefits of smart contracts so
I give you that I'm gonna go over a
interesting example some there's a tool
called Protege and that's how you create
ontology and Protege that people did
projet did really humorous ontology
called pizza and this this pizza
ontology will help you bake the perfect
pizza data and you can't violate it like
you can't put a hamburger bun on top of
that thing and call it a pizza and you
can actually validate this verify this
thing so think about linkage so here's
some standards that that deal with
linkage and you have your eyes which
we're all familiar with but it's
actually a really specific way to use
your eyes and XML namespaces and you've
probably seen these things in a lot of
HTML you don't know what they are but
essentially these are defining with with
these your eyes what these names
namespaces are as they're used later on
this HTML or in this case in this RDF
and you can see down here how there lies
how these namespaces are utilized like
right there you have a Creative Commons
license and you see what their terms
license what is a turn what are terms
what is a license well something
automated can go up here and and look at
and and go to that URL and go find out
what terms are and if you go to that URL
about terms you can learn and see data
about what those terms are if that you
will still works that's the problem with
the web is the VC rules might not work
any more often on these servers go down
so descriptive meaning it's it's
essentially symbols like what what is
describing what what is the name of
something and it seems silly to us
because we just talk when we understand
this stuff but you know something
automated really it's it has to know so
an assertion that we might make is Los
Angeles it is a city the assertion on a
Semantic Web would be broken up like
this subject predicate object this
object is a URI it's really clear what
Los Angeles is it's a type of and all
this stuff right here this is at the
basis of a stinner called RDF this is
all the triple and RDF is all about
declaring many many many triples to
create something that's meaningful and
and then it even connects so just
descriptive meaning standards how how it
would be expressed in the pizza ontology
so you have toppings right you want to
talk about what a topping is it's a
functional property an ingredient of
pizza and this is how you would declare
that for a machine a machine could
possibly understand what a topping is
not that the Machine understands what a
topping is but the machine would be able
to interact with topping data in a way
that is reasonable right it's as a
developer it seems ridiculous however
that you go through this effort to help
something automated so to take it one
step further and it gets further and
further and deeper and deeper the more
you dig in structural meaning to be able
to reason about something you have to
know how these things might relate how
these entities that you're talking about
pizza toppings mushrooms how they might
relate and what is appropriate like it
might not be appropriate to put a pizza
as a topping on top of a mushroom and
still call it a pizza that's not valid
to us that's ridiculous but to a machine
that really might count if it's making
pizza so here's how the stander might
come come about there's there's
something in in the ontology standard
w3c owl
it's called transitive property now here
this is the almost philosophical notion
about it
what is philosophical ingredients of
ingredients are ingredients of the whole
and the idea is that you have an
ingredient on a pizza then agreement me
have a sub ingredient but that sub
ingredient is still an ingredient of the
pizza and it's amazing but you have to
tell a machine about that otherwise it's
going to get very confused and possibly
make a pizza that isn't isn't gonna work
out right so here's here's how that
looks again as a developer I might be
terrified of this but I might use a tool
that would generate this not enough
tools are out there that are easy to
deal with not enough tools are out there
generating this kind of thing so here's
here's a here's one of my favorite
topics these crazy pizzas they make in
places like Taiwan and Japan I'm
probably Hong Kong this pizza has little
baby hot dogs little ketchup so on top
of each baby hotdog and then you can
kind of see the logic now if you want to
make an automatic Pizza make Baker its
it could use the ontology and
potentially make this pizza and still be
a valid pizza according to the ontology
but it's kind of ridiculous that's why I
chose this really it's it's pedantic
like it's it's it's too much work and
that's man who's Barney called it right
there and he actually worked on many
at the w3c and and he started digital
bazaar which is a really interesting
company right now and I consider him
sort of an antihero he developed a new
standard called json-ld and the idea is
that you're going to add context to data
with a lot less work as a developer
now json-ld is becoming a very important
standard like for example the Google
accepts it if you're an airline and you
want you want the the flight tickets to
show up in your email that way Google
will accept json-ld so json-ld has
become quite quite a large standard and
here's what it looks like it's a lot
less ponderous than the RDF that you saw
earlier it's not XML is JSON very
developer friendly but it still has a
lot of elements that are semantic or
provide context so when you think about
semantic etherium like what's the
appropriate level how far do we want to
go
I I consider it I'm thinking about it
and I think it's important to foster
creativity but not to overdo it right
just enough for us to have composability
and you know this is a good metaphor you
create a standard for LEGO brick but you
let people build whatever they want with
it but you need to have some structure
and aetherium obviously has a lot of
metadata involved addresses signatures
token balances you know we're going to
have identity claims the your eyes are
associated they're in a descriptive side
you know you have a be eyes
documentation of course and structure
enforced in the AVM like you you can
have as many objects as you want and you
know that nobody is going to mess around
with it if it's done right so one of the
reasons why we we should put more
metadata if possible into our work is
the permanency of it we might not be
around and this this application is
still being used
in the future and obviously ecosystem
thinking about tokens or identity these
these are and identity itself is
potentially creating great ecosystems
you create these footholds when you do
metadata and when you do it right and
swarm itself is actually quite an
opportunity because you can use json-ld
in there and you can connect connect all
these things together like right now
we're thinking yolk you'll refer to
json-ld that's hosted on swarm in your
contract but you should do it the other
way around too so that all your
documentation all your data all your
contracts everything somebody could
figure it all out even if you're not
there to explain it even if your
documentation is on the web that no
longer exists so the lessons are pretty
clear be light be light about standards
if if we have standards it's more like
documentation and we really encourage
people to do it it's fun and the key is
steal the good stuff from the w3c
because they really do have a lot of
good ideas we don't have to do it all
but just explore it and you'll find it
there's there's a lot of very
interesting stuff in there
just don't explore it too much because
it's quite overwhelming it's for it's
ridiculous sometimes but still the
vision of it is quite amazing it's it's
very interesting history so that's it
hope this helps you make your
applications that's it
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