Comments for The Transducer

Comment on “Foundational” Texts in the Digital Humanities by Foundational Material in Digital History

Foundational Material in Digital History — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:04:46 +0000

[...] This post by Rafael Alvarado has been making the rounds on Twitter and got me thinking about, more specifically, what material would be a useful introduction to digital history (as opposed to digital humanities). Here’s my list in chronological order: [...]

Comment on “Foundational” Texts in the Digital Humanities by lauren’s library blog - Feeling like learning something new…

lauren’s library blog - Feeling like learning something new… — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:32:11 +0000

[...] useful lists that came through were Foundational Material in Digital History from Digital Clio and “Foundational” Texts in the Digital Humanities from The Transducer. The most interesting thing to me about these lists was that I had already read [...]

Comment on Brain Behavior and Behaving like Brains by Ed Webb

Ed Webb — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:22:15 +0000

Absolutely spot on. I have been feeling energized by the Kafka research – justified in some of my teaching tactics that deliberately set up dissonance. I think your take on the segmentation research, and brain research in general, is quite right. The best education will confront the brain with challenges that encourage it to flex its sense-making muscles, to process and render data. If we serve it pre-processed portions of sense, it won’t have to chew and its jaws etc will atrophy.

Comment on Toward a Structuralist RDF Schema Definition Language by ontoligent

ontoligent — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:25:07 +0000

Gardner — I’m glad the conversation appeals to you. I take this is a good sign of the success of my and others’ efforts to nudge the whole semantostuff conversation into humanist waters.

And yes, I’ll add that plugin ASAP. Thanks for pointing it out …

Comment on Toward a Structuralist RDF Schema Definition Language by Gardner

Gardner — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:26:38 +0000

I’m very glad this conversation is happening on a blog. I understand some of the words and struggle even to see the outlines of the argument in most cases, but it’s fun to watch you guys at workplay. And I fantasize that if I keep reading over some of this semantostuff it’ll actually start to sink in. Inferring from context, making predictions, and checking results is how I taught myself audio lingo from reading “Stereo Review” magazine. The process was slow and oh-so-iterative, but when I finally grasped all the basics, I really grasped them. Now, rdf and non-symmetrical analogies will be much harder than “wow” and “flutter” (glory days of analog, doncha know) and “total harmonic distortion” and “signal-to-noise ratio” (who knew *that* would be so handy in describing online communications?), but leave the boy his fantasies, and maybe one day he’ll understand a few drams more than he does now. Especially with your able indirect tutelage.

Now, please put that “notify of follow-up comments” plug-in here so I don’t miss a single episode.

Comment on Toward a Structuralist RDF Schema Definition Language by ontoligent

ontoligent — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:00:46 +0000

Yes, this looks like a good approach — it really is a matter of creating a more elaborate form rdf:Statement. What I am realizing is that the real work will come in processing these sorts of statements. The algoritm’s the thing …

Comment on Toward a Structuralist RDF Schema Definition Language by Patrick Murray-John

Patrick Murray-John — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:52:50 +0000

Interesting article—thanks. That all does make reified triples tricky. I suppose the different instances could at least be described with owl:sameAs, but that might be tricky to keep track of.

If you are working in PHP, I vaguely remember the RAP API having a reify method that rewrites the triples and assigns a bnode to the statement. Not sure what’s there in other language APIs.

I’m wondering if something completely different might work, that handles what you are getting at in a more abstracted form. Maybe a class called TropeInstance with properties that get at the info you need. It might be recreating the same structure of rdf:Statement along with its issues, but might also offer more flexibility. So maybe:

:ti1 a o:TropeInstance ;
o:subject :resource1 ;
o:relation o:opposite_of ;
o:object :resource2 ;
o:just_as :t2 ;
o:occurs_at :lineReference1 .

:ti2 a o:TropeInstance ;
o:subject :resource3 ;
o:relation o:opposite_of ;
o:object :resource4 ;
o:just_as :t1 ;
o:occurs_at :lineReference2 .

Not sure if that would be better or worse!

Comment on Toward a Structuralist RDF Schema Definition Language by ontoligent

ontoligent — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:55:13 +0000

Patrick — Thanks for the tip re reified triples! This does seem to be the logical starting point. One thing I am trying to get my head around is the fact that the same triple, abstractly speaking, may have different reified instances. Also, it looks like you can’t just point to an existing triple — you have to rewrite the triple in a new form. This must break most inferencing engines.

Just discovered this article on “Reifying reified relationships” has an interesting take on the issue.

Comment on Toward a Structuralist RDF Schema Definition Language by Patrick Murray-John

Patrick Murray-John — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:16:04 +0000

Ah, just re-read post and realized that you’re all over the many possibilities. Nailing those down will be a fascinating exercise!

Comment on Toward a Structuralist RDF Schema Definition Language by Patrick Murray-John

Patrick Murray-John — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:05:27 +0000

RDF does have Reified triples. I avoid them whenever I can, but in what you describe they might be just the ticket. Only trick is a reliable algorithm for minting the URI.

I’m not good enough with OWL to know for sure, but it might be possible to do that in such a way and a reasoning engine could draw conclusions from it. Seems to me, though, that the secret sauce would be subtlety in the predicates. has_part seems like just one of many possibilities. How about

Black opposite_of White :: Hot opposite_of Cold

Car powered_by Gas :: Sailboat powered_by Wind

NB opposite_of is symmetric, powered_by is not.

Very interesting stuff…love the way this could add new goodies to the Digital Humanities toolkit! Can’t wait to play with it!

Patrick