Related posts:

• Carl Hewitt's Direct Logic, inconsistency tolerant reasoning and Subject-centric computing

  I have been fascinated by the idea of building computer systems which are inconsistency tolerant for many years. I usually address this problem from practical perspective: I just try to write code that demonstrates behavior that I would like to model. But I always thought that it should be beneficial to have some kind of a formal logic that can provide foundations for my heuristic approach. I follow Carl Hewitt’s work for many years and it seems that his inconsistency tolerant Direct Logic can play this foundational role. Firstly, let’s take a look at how traditional logic handles contradictions

• iPad, Multi-touch interaction and Subject-centric computing

  I am very excited about iPad. It makes multi-touch interaction mainstream. iPad revives and introduces new generation of developers and users to the idea of “direct object manipulation” which is one of the key concepts of Subject-centric computing.

• Inference in Ontopedia

  I just finished reading “Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Modeling in RDF, RDFS and OWL”. Great book! Lots of examples and deep exploration of Semantic Web fundamentals. It inspired me… not to use OWL, no… but to describe how we approach inference/reasoning in Ontopedia.

• Subject-centric applications: toward subject-centric computing

  Recently we added a small framework that allows us to build/use subject-centric applications in Ontopedia. Within traditional paradigm of application-centric computing, we have to start an application (or go to some domain/function specific website) and then we can change application/website context. Within subject-centric environment, we can select a subject and then we can have access to various applications/functions that can be used with the subject in context

• "Creating Linked Data" by Jeni Tennison

  Jeni Tennison published several excellent blog entries which describe process of creating Linked Data. If you are interested in semantic technologies, you will find lots of important ideas in these postings

• Modeling Time and Identity

  I really like ideas described in this presentation by Rich Hickey.

• iPhone OS 3.0 - ready for Subject-centric computing

  Apple just introduced iPhone OS 3.0 (beta) and 3.0 SDK. There are lots of improvements and new features. iPhone is a great platform for developing mobile applications. OS 3.0 makes it even more compelling for building Subject-centric solutions. One of my favorite features is Push Notification Service

• Finding 'facts' (without scanning millions of documents)

  The new version of Ontopedia PSI server is out. There are several interesting features in this release. We introduced auto-reification of all assertions, “everything is a subject” now. In the new version, preferable and recommended way to model web resources is to model them as first class “subjects”. Another interesting feature is ability to search for ‘facts’ related to various subjects.

• Subject-centric micro-blogging and Ontopedia's knowledge map

  Traditionally, when we think about subject-centric approach to organizing information, we have in mind equivalent of “master data” – main entities, their properties and relationships. This type of information is relatively static. Of course, subject-centric approach works well also for representing/organizing information about “transactions” and “events”.

• Carl Hewitt - Actor model, OWL, knowledge inconsistency and paraconsistent logic

  ITConversations published recently Jon Udell’s interview with Carl Hewitt. In this interview – “Interdependent Message-Passing ORGs”, Carl Hewitt shares his ideas about distributed computations, Actor model, inconsistent knowledge, paraconsistent logic and semantic web.

• Watching an interview about Powerset

  InfoQ published an interview with Tom Preston-Werner on Powerset, GitHub, Ruby and Erlang. I really like projects that try to analyze text/resources on the web and try to implement “smart search”. Powerset is one of these projects. But what I like even more is the approach when we explicitly represent facts/information items using open knowledge representation standards such as Topic Maps or RDF.

• The new version of Ontopedia PSI server

  The new version of Ontopedia PSI server is out now. It is possible to represent various types of assertions related to subjects (names, occurrences, associations). The new PSI server allows also to record and integrate opinions of different users. Its internal knowledge representation is optimized for paraconsistent reasoning

• Serendipitous reuse and representations with basic ontological commitments

  Steve Vinoski published a very interesting article: Serendipitous reuse. He also provided additional comments in his blog. The author explores benefits of RESTful uniform interfaces based on HTTP “verbs” GET, PUT, POST and DELETE for building expansible distributed systems. He also compares RESTful approach with traditional SOA implementations based on strongly typed operation-centric interfaces.

  Serendipitous reuse is one of the main goals of Subject-centric computing. In addition to uniform interfaces, Subject-centric computing promotes usage of uniform representations with basic ontological commitments (as one of the possible representations).

• Slides from Topic Maps 2008

  I did a presentation and tutorial at Topic Maps 2008.

• Subject-centric computing and robotics: Osaka will soon be known as the capital of the robotics world..?

  I was in Kyoto for three days in December. Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto is a region with high concentration of companies involved in robotics. I cannot stop thinking about robotics and Subject-centric computing after this trip. Traditionally, when we talk about Subject-centric computing (SCC) and Topic Maps (as enabling technology), we assume more or less slowly evolving models. In the world of robotics, models are evolving in real time.

• Resource-Oriented Architecture and Subject-centric computing vs. traditional SOA: modeling business transactions

  If we look at traditional SOA, business transactions are modeled typically as service operations that are part of a service contract. Operation invocations in traditional SOA are not treated as first class “objects”. Operation invocations do not have own identity. Components/processes inside of a service and service clients cannot reference individual operation calls. Situation is different if we look at subject-centric and RESTFul services.

• Multi-touch interaction, iPhone and Subject-centric computing

  If you follow news related to HCI (human-computer interaction), then you probably saw multi-touch interaction demonstrations by Jeff Han. You probably already use (or played) with iPhone or iPod touch. So you know what multi-touch interaction is about. This kind of interface goes hand in hand with Subject-centric computing. Why?

• OS X Leopard and subject-centric computing

  I upgraded one of my Mac-based systems with OS X Leopard. It is great. I like it. But from the subject-centric perspective it is still more or less a traditional application/document-centric OS. How can we make it more subject-centric?

• Resource-oriented architecture and Subject-centric computing: what is the difference?

  I just finished reading RESTful Web Services. It is an amazing book and I think it will play a very important role in defining main principles of the next generation of the Web. The authors of the book introduce the Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA) as an architecture for building the resource-centric programmable Web. “Resource” is a fundamental concept in this architecture.

• About "Subject-centric"

  Representation of “real life” objects and direct object manipulation were fundamental ideas during early days of personal computers. Unfortunately, over the years these ideas have been forgotten in the mainstream of computing. Not entirely, of course. We have GUI, object oriented programming.