Trainspotting as an explanation of the Semantic Web
Posted on 09. May, 2009 by matt in Linked Data, Matt's Adventures and Musings
I just came across this post on Russell Davies’ blog titled I like things to be numbered. It’s an extract from an episode of the BBC Radio Show Museum of Curiosity. In it, a railway enthusiast named Chris Donald explains the beauty that trainspotters find in the fact that the railway companies assign numbers to absolutely everything, including clocks. [listen to the mp3]
Listening to Chris Donald speak, I couldn’t resist seeing the connection to Linked Data and the Semantic Web. He nails the key concepts of the beauty and the loaded possibilities that come from being able to trace the connections between things. The three-minute account even draws out the aspect of Semantic Web that tends to make people squeamish:
[...] I like things to be numbered. I don’t know why; I just do. The idea that every bridge had a number attached to it appeals to me and it appeals to a lot of people. [...] It’s all quantifiable. They know how many trains there are because they’re all numbered. They have a book with all the numbers in it. It’s all very controlled and they can understand it and it’s very two-dimensional. [...] with trains – you stand on the platform and you look at the track and you know that that metal bit of track on the floor is touching every train that you’re looking for and you understand that it’s a puzzle that can be solved.
I frequently find myself trying to adequately characterize the distinction between Semantic Web and Linked Data. Is it just a re-branding of the concepts? Is it an offshoot of the greater phenomenon? In this little account by an avid trainspotter, I see a wonderful way to point out the distinction.
The past 15 years of noise about Semantic Web have had the ring of this trainspotter’s “I like things to be numbered [...] It’s all very controlled and [I] can understand it. [...] it’s a puzzle that can be solved.” While there is nothing wrong with this per-se, it is only going to motivate certain types of people. Further, it lends itself to visions of grandeur that quickly wander into a quagmire of failed logic and, to be honest, treads close to the intellectual foundations of fascism.
Meanwhile, the burgeoning Linked Data movement is much more akin to railroad engineers saying “Well, we numbered everything out of necessity. Might as well let the rest of the world make sense of those connections too. Who knows what they’ll get out of it, but it certainly doesn’t hurt us to share the data.”
There’s one key place where I wish to differ with Mr. Donald, and I think a lot of Linked Data people will agree. He describes this world of connections as being very orderly, controlled, and two-dimensional. He says this because he is only looking at a single set of data from a single perspective. As soon as you open your eyes to the growing cloud of linked open data, the landscape becomes much more akin to a wilderness, or possibly a garden, where the surface may seem simple and pretty while the world underneath is thriving with the complex, messy stuff of life.
On a side note, I know it’s just because my American ear can’t tell one Mancusian accent from another but the trainspotter in that clip sounds an awful lot like Brian Cox from University of Manchester, who has been giving updates on the LHC at the TED conferences.