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

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 3 Demo of Naming There will be a test later: I do hereby grant Harry Halpin the additional name of  <- 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:  <- 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 4 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 5 The Grounding of Common Ground 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 6 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 7 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 8 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:

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 9 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.”

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 10 RDF Semantics - continued W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004 – sections: “…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.”

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 11 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 12 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:  names the person on this card.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 13 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 14 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 15 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 16 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.

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 17 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

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 18 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:  PDF:

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 19 References J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, and O. Lassila. The semantic web Scientific American, May 2001 J. J. Carroll, P. Hayes, C. Bizer, and P. Stickl er. Named Graphs, Provenance and Trust H. H. Clark. Using Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, H. Halpin and H. S. Thompson Web Proper Names: Naming Referents on the Web L. Ding, T. Finin, A. Joshi, R. Pan, R. S. Cost, Y. Peng, P. Reddivari, V. C. Doshi, and J. Sa chs. 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, D. Lewis. Convention - A Philosophical Study Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA, L. Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations. (Translated by Anscombe, G.E.M.) Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1953

© 2006 Deltek Systems, Inc. 20 Demo test: Who is this?  But who is this? 