135 - The Once and Future Linked Open Data feat. Dorothea and Jonny - librarypunk

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jonny: I'm so glad that you're here with us, Dorothy, just because, (00:00):
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Jonny: like, I'm just, like, always interested in your perspective on this, (00:03):
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Jonny: having, like, lived in the library world of leaked data for so long, (00:07):
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Jonny: just being, like, because on the other end of, like, living in programmer world, (00:10):
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Jonny: sometimes I still get the sort of, like, both the persnickety, (00:14):
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Jonny: you know, purist side and the people that are trying to make it work happening. (00:18):
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Jonny: But like very few like actually this doesn't even come close to meeting my needs (00:22):
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Jonny: or like resemble my my work style at all i. (00:28):
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Jay: Remember it was so funny like scott carlson helped edit or write that like linked (00:32):
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Jay: data in libraries book and then like two days later was like linked data's dead (00:37):
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Jay: and then like became a like a programmer i love scott i think. (00:41):
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Dorothea: He was stuck in a deeply shitty workplace and i. (00:51):
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Jay: Agree it happens to us and then we get out of them hooray. (00:55):
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Jonny: Proud of you. (01:03):
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Jay: Yay okay, (01:05):
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Jay: I'm Justin. (01:35):
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Justin: I'm a Skoll Column Librarian, my pronouns are he and they. (01:35):
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Sadie: I'm sadie i work it at a public library and my pronouns are they then. (01:38):
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Jay: I'm jay and i'm a no longer a music librarian, (01:43):
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Jay: finally fucking a cataloging librarian again for the first time seven years (01:56):
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Jay: after finishing She Graskell. (02:02):
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Jay: And I won't say where. And my pronouns are he, him. (02:05):
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Justin: Just post the address this time around. (02:09):
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Jay: If you're in the Discord, you know. (02:12):
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Justin: Okay. And we have guests, would you like to introduce yourselves? (02:13):
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Dorothea: Sure, I'll start. I'm Dorothea Salo, pronouns she, her. (02:17):
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Dorothea: And I teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Information School. (02:21):
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Jonny: I'm Johnny Saunders, they, them. I'm just sort of like, I guess I do various (02:26):
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Jonny: forms of like information based work at UCLA. (02:31):
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Justin: Thank you. (02:37):
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Jonny: Yeah. For the belated applause. I was waiting for that. (02:38):
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Dorothea: Thank you. Very kind. (02:41):
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Justin: Welcome. Welcome. I still have my reorganized on board, so I still only have like 10 sounds. Oh. (02:42):
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Justin: No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me. (02:54):
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Jay: I i started making justin watch it's always sunny and it was a bad decision (03:00):
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Jay: because now the soundboard has it's always sunny theme on it and. (03:07):
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Jonny: It's got to be the full length version too no soundboard is complete without (03:11):
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Jonny: the one that keeps going for an hour. (03:15):
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Justin: Because that's. (03:17):
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Jay: Just a piece of like public domain music it's not even like written for the (03:19):
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Jay: show I'm pretty sure sweet I. (03:23):
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Justin: Think I had just the full Soviet Union anime, (03:27):
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Justin: yeah I was like this is anime 1 you piece of shit, (03:33):
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Justin: yeah that one keeps going, (03:42):
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Justin: so this was an episode we came up with because (03:46):
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Justin: city wanted us to explain linked open data and (03:49):
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Justin: i think i probably know the second least (03:52):
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Justin: so i figured it would be funnest for (03:56):
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Justin: me to start and try and explain what linked open data is (03:59):
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Justin: which is all from (04:02):
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Justin: what i remember in grad school which is the last (04:06):
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Justin: time i ever had to interact with it that i'm aware of (04:09):
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Justin: besides like you know the parts of (04:12):
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Justin: linked data that are used by google is it's primarily (04:15):
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Justin: you can think about it as triples and everything is one item linked to another (04:18):
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Justin: item so hamlet is a character in hamlet the book those are two separate uris and then It's a play. (04:25):
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Justin: Well, it's in book form. (04:37):
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Jay: Okay. (04:39):
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Justin: And then Shakespeare is the author of Hamlet, and so there's an is the author (04:43):
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Justin: of statement that each has a URI, (04:49):
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Justin: and these three things can chain together forever, and that way you would have (04:52):
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Justin: something that's both machine-readable and human-readable, and somehow that (04:58):
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Justin: makes data boxes in Google work. (05:02):
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Dorothea: Or certain extremely non-human-readable forms of human-readable. (05:05):
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Justin: Right so once he's trying to organize it in other ways like say make a list (05:10):
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Justin: of things suddenly it doesn't work anymore yeah because now you have to see a series of statements. (05:17):
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Jonny: Yep i'm like just chin. (05:23):
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Sadie: Hands here waiting for all of these super smart. (05:25):
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Jay: People literally, (05:28):
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Jay: this is we explain linked data to sata yeah. (05:31):
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Jonny: There's like the tripled explanation and And then immediately you fall off the (05:37):
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Jonny: cliff of ideology and 25 years of some of the most prickly and opinionated people (05:41):
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Jonny: in the world making like claims on reality that you truly can't believe until you see them. (05:47):
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Jonny: So it's like, you know, we got talking about technology and beliefs. (05:53):
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Jonny: And then also like for a lot of people, like a huge amount of like wasted time, (05:57):
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Jonny: trauma or success, depending on if you work for Amazon or Google or not. (06:02):
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Jay: Yeah. Like my experience with linked data is that I took ontology development (06:06):
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Jay: in grad school with Dave Dubin, shouts out Dave Dubin. (06:11):
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Jay: And we developed, we learned RDF and we mainly wrote in turtle writing. (06:15):
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Jay: I think but we learned like all the other like triples and in three and all (06:22):
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Jay: that but i think he liked turtle the the best if i'm remembering the only. (06:26):
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Jonny: One that worked. (06:30):
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Jay: Yeah as a as a class we collectively created an ontology together each of us (06:31):
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Jay: had our own specific section of it that we had to create and like mine's still (06:40):
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Jay: it's like still on my github and everything like it's still like theoretically (06:43):
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Jay: is a working rdf like ontology is. (06:47):
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Jonny: This the origin of the homosaurus. (06:51):
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Jay: Yes no but i'm (06:53):
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Jay: also i'm also on the homosaurus which is (06:56):
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Jay: actually linked data but i don't none of us on the board actually interact with (06:59):
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Jay: that part so much like we have like a software dude who does that but like we (07:05):
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Jay: all know about it to some degree and then i've also done some like wiki data (07:09):
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Jay: like I did a Wikidata training. (07:13):
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Jay: I went through one of those trainings one summer, and that was cool. (07:19):
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Jay: And I submitted a proposal for a paper on thinking of Wikidata and linked data (07:24):
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Jay: as a cyborg kind of thing, but interrogating that. (07:32):
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Jay: And I submitted this to the Code for Live journal that ended up being the one (07:37):
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Jay: that everyone yelled at. So I'm glad it got rejected. (07:42):
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Jay: Like literally that issue was the one that I submitted to with like the data, (07:46):
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Jay: like bad data practices. (07:52):
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Jay: That one, that was the one I had submitted to. So I'm glad I got rejected now. (07:55):
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Jonny: Narrow miss, narrow miss. Dorothy, weren't you the one that blew the whistle (08:01):
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Jonny: on that? Or is that different? It's like a different time. (08:07):
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Dorothea: It was like you and Becky. (08:10):
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Jay: Right? (08:11):
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Dorothea: Well, I mean, if we blew the whistle over anything, it wasn't over linked data. (08:12):
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Dorothea: It was over privacy. (08:18):
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Dorothea: It's a thing. You might want to let people keep it. (08:21):
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Jay: Yeah. (08:25):
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Dorothea: Yeah. (08:26):
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Jay: Yeah, I just happened to be writing about linked data for the thing I was writing about. Right. (08:27):
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Jay: Yeah, so I'm very glad that my goofy little high theory article got rejected. (08:33):
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Justin: So I actually never ended up using Turtle. I think I learned it in three notation. (08:43):
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Justin: It was very not hands-on the way I learned about it. (08:51):
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Justin: And so it was never clear how it worked except for the aspects that kind of (08:55):
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Justin: pulled from Wikidata and that explained a little bit, (09:02):
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Justin: but I never got an in-depth explainer for how Wikidata works. (09:08):
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Justin: So it was very theoretical and my metadata teacher was very on the theoretical (09:12):
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Justin: side of things, so I never got to see a lot of practical applications of a lot (09:18):
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Justin: of the stuff we talked about in class. (09:22):
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Jonny: So that is not how. (09:24):
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Dorothea: I teach metadata. (09:26):
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Jonny: Yeah if. (09:27):
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Dorothea: You're not doing that one step away yeah. (09:29):
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Jonny: Exactly and that's like one of the major cultural (09:32):
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Jonny: fissures is that just like is it supposed to be something (09:35):
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Jonny: that you touch or is it something that is supposed (09:38):
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Jonny: to be like a true artifact of the world and (09:41):
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Jonny: needs to be done once and never touched again you know (09:44):
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Jonny: so like that that you the division (09:47):
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Jonny: between the teaching styles it's like reflective of (09:51):
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Jonny: the entire system of belief that goes into linked open (09:54):
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Jonny: data as well i'm like i'm curious like like hearing people's like origin stories (09:57):
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Jonny: with linkedin because like i'm like because because dorothea you've been doing (10:04):
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Jonny: this for like a while there's like in libraries and stuff like that i'm curious (10:09):
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Jonny: like if what your origins really are i. (10:12):
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Dorothea: Mean you know i got into it the same way a lot of people did as it started to (10:15):
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Dorothea: be talked about out as potentially where libraries move from MARC. (10:20):
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Dorothea: And, you know, that's a really awkward question when you think about it. (10:25):
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Dorothea: Sticking with the homegrown, if you will, like MARC encoding, (10:32):
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Dorothea: which we made up from scratch in the 1960s, Lord bless Henriette Avram, she was awesome. Right. (10:38):
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Dorothea: But it doesn't map cleanly onto any of the dominant data structures, (10:46):
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Dorothea: data models that we have today. (10:53):
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Dorothea: It's pulling teeth to try to stuff mark into a relational database such that (10:56):
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Dorothea: you can actually do anything with it. (11:01):
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Dorothea: You can kind of do it in XML, but XML is really squishy that way. (11:03):
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Dorothea: And I don't mean that in a bad way. XML squishiness is actually quite useful. (11:07):
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Dorothea: If you look at, for example, EAD, encoded archival description, (11:12):
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Dorothea: some of EAD is what you and I, Johnny, would probably think of as data. (11:17):
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Dorothea: But a lot of EAD is narrative, right? It's storytelling. (11:23):
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Dorothea: And you know what? Databases are shit at storytelling. You can't represent Hamlet in a database. (11:29):
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Dorothea: Linked data is shit in storytelling. One of the things that really pissed me (11:35):
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Dorothea: off about the very early days of linked data was some of its boosters going (11:40):
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Dorothea: around and just bragging on it as something where you could literally represent anything, right? (11:45):
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Dorothea: If you could put it in a computer, you could put it in linked data. (11:53):
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Dorothea: And my retort to that is, as it has always been, and this is pure coincidence, but I kind of love it. (11:57):
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Dorothea: All right, express Hamlet in RDF and get back to me, okay? (12:04):
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Dorothea: You can't do it. And I was reading through some of the stuff in the show notes (12:11):
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Dorothea: for today. And I happened on one of the Tim Berners-Lee pages. (12:17):
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Dorothea: Let me see if I can find that. Ah, yes. And Tim Berners-Lee on this particular (12:24):
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Dorothea: page talks about a semantic web, or sorry, a magical artificial intelligence. He's talking about AI. (12:29):
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Dorothea: And he says this, the concept of machine understandable documents does not imply (12:38):
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Dorothea: some magical artificial intelligence, which allows machines to comprehend human mumbling. (12:42):
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Dorothea: That's literally what he says. Human mumbling. Excuse you, Tim Berners-Lee. (12:50):
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Dorothea: Excuse you. Language is one of the most magnificent things we have as human beings. (12:57):
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Dorothea: And you are calling it mumblings. things excuse you very much sorry that was my rant. (13:05):
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Jonny: No well felt i mean yeah his his (13:11):
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Jonny: relationship to this this sort of like you know (13:13):
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Jonny: the fuzziness of language is like one of (13:16):
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Jonny: the most fascinating parts of like the early (13:19):
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Jonny: outlooks on what link data could be because on the one (13:22):
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Jonny: hand there's sort of the romanticism of language and like (13:25):
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Jonny: the fluidity of language as being something to embrace but then almost immediately (13:28):
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Jonny: that becomes like squished out just sort of like the thing that's almost immediately (13:33):
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Jonny: excluded is the ability for people to actually express ambiguity uncertainty and so on yeah right. (13:37):
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Jay: I think last time you were on johnny or or maybe this was in like just oh no (13:45):
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Jay: this is when we were watching it together but we talked about how like the the (13:50):
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Jay: ted nelson versus the tim berners-lee view of like the interconnected internet and data. (13:54):
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Jonny: Right let's see if i can find interesting. (14:01):
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Dorothea: Dude ted nelson i actually did get to meet him once. (14:05):
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Jonny: Um i. (14:08):
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Dorothea: Was like wiped out at the time unfortunately but uh yeah i will i will always treasure that he was an, (14:10):
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Dorothea: is i think still is interesting dude. (14:19):
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Jonny: Yeah the. (14:22):
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Jay: Chad ted nelson. (14:23):
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Jonny: Like so i'm like the story that (14:27):
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Jonny: i don't have a good like hold on it's just like so like what happened and this (14:29):
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Jonny: probably relates to just like you know some of the stuff that we talk about (14:33):
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Jonny: all the time in like cyber security screaming channel and just like saying what (14:36):
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Jonny: you may have to deal with as well of just like the state of technologies that (14:40):
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Jonny: go into libraries and how just like they're They're not actually under any of our control, (14:45):
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Jonny: and we sort of do the best we can to exist on whatever scraps that IT wants to feed us and stuff. (14:50):
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Jonny: And so I imagine that's the intertwined stories of why did linked data not happen (14:56):
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Jonny: all the way at libraries, sort of related to the institutional inertia as well. (15:02):
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Dorothea: Yeah, that's part of it. And, you know, getting back to my point about the question (15:07):
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Dorothea: of getting off mark, relational databases weren't going to work. (15:13):
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Dorothea: XML wasn't going to work and was in kind of a little bit of a decline as we (15:18):
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Dorothea: were asking ourselves this question. (15:23):
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Dorothea: So what was left? I remember a blog post by Jonathan Rochkang, (15:25):
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Dorothea: who hates LinkedIn. Why does he hate RDF? (15:30):
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Dorothea: And, you know, he backs it up. He's not just a random hater. (15:34):
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Dorothea: But he was like, we can't, we cannot move to this. And I'm like, (15:38):
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Dorothea: okay, what's the alternative, right? (15:42):
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Dorothea: And there are things about RDF that are attractive ideologically, (15:44):
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Dorothea: but also practically to libraries. (15:52):
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Dorothea: The idea of the open in linked open data. (15:55):
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Dorothea: We can really truly share and OCLC can't stop us. Oops, did I say that out loud? Wow. (16:00):
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Dorothea: I mean, you know, really, the elephant in the room is OCLC and its enclosure (16:08):
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Dorothea: of Mark and Mark cataloging for its own corporate, (16:15):
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Dorothea: and I am going to call them corporate, I don't care that they're not legally (16:22):
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Dorothea: and non-profit, for their own corporate benefit. (16:26):
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Dorothea: So linked data to some of us look like a possible way out of that. (16:29):
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Dorothea: And, you know, I can't fault anybody for that. It's definitely a goal worth pursuing. (16:36):
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Dorothea: So why didn't it get as far as we might have wanted it to? (16:41):
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Dorothea: Part of it is that RDF was not built, and Johnny can speak to this more because (16:46):
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Dorothea: he's read more of the STS and sociology literature around it than I have. (16:55):
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Dorothea: But it was not really built for practicality or computability, (16:59):
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Dorothea: right? I, as a complete Sparkle duffer, and Sparkle, if you haven't run into (17:03):
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Dorothea: it, is the query language for linked data. (17:10):
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Dorothea: It is to link to RDF what SQL is for relational database. (17:13):
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Dorothea: I can make a typo in a Sparkle query and knock a server over dead. (17:18):
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Dorothea: It's not even hard. (17:24):
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Dorothea: So, like, the brittleness of just being able to ask a question without killing (17:28):
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Dorothea: a server, this is not a consideration for the early designers of the semantic web. (17:34):
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Dorothea: And, like, how do you build a library infrastructure on a foundation that is (17:43):
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Dorothea: that technologically brittle? (17:49):
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Dorothea: And the answer is you can't. You really, really can't. (17:50):
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Dorothea: Another, I'm not going to say this is a problem, actually. I actually think it was good. (17:55):
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Dorothea: But it's a situation that does not commend itself to libraries, to librarians, right? (17:59):
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Dorothea: We tend to be very orderly people. people and catalogers (18:07):
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Dorothea: as much as anybody and more than some so in (18:11):
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Dorothea: the aughts right in well no not the (18:15):
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Dorothea: aughts in the teens i guess particularly in europe (18:18):
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Dorothea: there was just this flowering of experimentation (18:21):
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Dorothea: with how are we going to (18:24):
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Dorothea: represent the things in the library universe (18:27):
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Dorothea: like books and maps and musical scores (18:30):
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Dorothea: and all and movies and all that good stuff how (18:34):
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Dorothea: are we going to represent present this in rdf lots of (18:37):
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Dorothea: experimentation a lot of it was fantastic european is (18:40):
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Dorothea: great yeah yeah there's a lot of really good thinking very practical thinking (18:44):
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Dorothea: going into this but there were models data models rdf models ontologies if you (18:51):
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Dorothea: will springing up all over the place and so if you're an average cataloger you're (18:57):
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Dorothea: looking at this and going well what which one (19:01):
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Dorothea: do I learn and which one are we going to use? (19:04):
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Dorothea: And when is there a tool that's going to work with any of this? (19:07):
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Jonny: Yeah. (19:10):
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Dorothea: And the answer is there wasn't. Now, what seems to have fallen out of that, (19:10):
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Dorothea: is that BibFrame, for all of its faults, and it has many, it is not my favorite (19:16):
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Dorothea: bibliographic ontology. (19:23):
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Dorothea: It seems to be kind of taking over the world and muscling out a lot of that (19:25):
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Dorothea: European experimentation. (19:31):
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Dorothea: And that frankly makes me sad because Europe, there's several countries in Europe (19:33):
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Dorothea: that just plain kicked BibFrame's ass as far as modeling quality. (19:39):
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Dorothea: And i hate that they're (19:43):
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Dorothea: getting plowed under basically by this (19:47):
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Dorothea: crappy american juggernaut but why why is this happening because they're finally (19:50):
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Dorothea: tooling they're finally cataloging tools that as much as any rdf based tool can fail to suck, (19:57):
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Dorothea: yeah like i know in in alma you can do. (20:09):
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Jay: Bib frame stuff in alma. (20:11):
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Dorothea: Yeah but you can you can look at sinopia and you can look at marva and you can (20:13):
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Dorothea: imagine an actual person using these right and making them work and getting (20:17):
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Dorothea: good records out of them which we didn't have for at least a literal actual (20:23):
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Dorothea: decade after BibFrame happened. (20:29):
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Dorothea: So when Tim Berners-Lee calls human language mumbling, I think it's a symptom (20:33):
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Dorothea: of the contempt that so many linked data people have for human beings. (20:40):
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Dorothea: And I yelled at the Semantic Web and Libraries conference in like 2014, (20:47):
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Dorothea: a decade ago, about exactly that. (20:53):
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Dorothea: Stop dissing human beings you can't do that if you actually want linked data (20:55):
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Dorothea: but nobody listened and here we are right yeah. (21:01):
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Jay: Like another idea and this was also something i think i talked with johnny (21:06):
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Jay: about like another idea for a goofy like high-minded like theory paper i had (21:09):
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Jay: was thinking of like linked data as this attempt to like do a reverse confusion (21:14):
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Jay: of tongues like a pre-tower of babel divine language that ignores the actual... (21:20):
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Jay: The reason that linked data is cool is that it has the potential to, (21:27):
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Jay: everyone to have their own way of doing it and it'll talk together and intermingle (21:32):
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Jay: instead it's just turned into this like nope everything looks this way now and (21:37):
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Jay: this almost like mechanized version of language like taking over like it doesn't (21:41):
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Jay: care about being human readable actually. (21:46):
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Jonny: Right and like so it's it's like this this tension that that was there from (21:49):
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Jonny: the origin of it and it's It's actually just like the dawn of the term linked (21:56):
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Jonny: to data as opposed to the semantic web is just like a part of this, (22:00):
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Jonny: the same thing of like part of this. (22:03):
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Jonny: I feel like we need to like at least nod to, because it's like, (22:05):
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Jonny: we talked about this at length last time I was on here, but just like also nod (22:08):
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Jonny: to the Lindsay Poirier piece, (22:12):
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Jonny: like a turn to the scruffy, which is like we both called out as being like one (22:13):
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Jonny: of this, this is like seminal work on like understanding the culture of the semantic web. (22:16):
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Jonny: And just like that just like points to and also just like it's there too in in tim biel's website, (22:20):
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Jonny: of that just like the separation of linked (22:27):
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Jonny: data and linked open data from the semantic web was about like (22:30):
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Jonny: reclaiming just like stuff that worked as opposed to stuff (22:33):
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Jonny: that like was perfect that just like this is we're about like trying to make (22:36):
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Jonny: a bunch of separate ontology so it's like the initial idea of being there's (22:39):
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Jonny: one graph like one global graph where everything is always linked together and (22:43):
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Jonny: there should be one uri that represents each unique concept and only one. (22:48):
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Jonny: And to the point where just like there's these sort of like absurd blog (22:55):
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Jonny: posts and like one of the things that's amazing always about just like web history (22:58):
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Jonny: is that a lot of it is just like still there and still up there at least on (23:02):
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Jonny: archive.org but just like these just like blog posts that i think this is 2009 (23:06):
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Jonny: i put this in the in the links as well but i'm just like they apparently took (23:11):
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Jonny: took down the comment section on it. (23:14):
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Jonny: But just like someone that was like from like semantic web, like in this era (23:15):
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Jonny: of just posting a blog post about when the first time that the New York Times (23:20):
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Jonny: had like linked data in their web version of the product. (23:24):
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Jonny: And so what they'd done is they'd made some, you know, article that was about. (23:28):
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Jonny: Barack Obama and the quote unquote, you know, the racist controversy, (23:35):
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Jonny: like, you know, Barack Obama is a Muslim, whatever. So it was an article about that controversy. (23:38):
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Jonny: And so there was an RDF claim that was like, Barack Obama related to Muslim (23:42):
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Jonny: or something like that, that just like, this is just like trying to describe (23:49):
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Jonny: the contents of this piece of writing. (23:52):
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Jonny: But then people immediately were like (23:53):
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Jonny: this is messed up because that's now a claim on (23:56):
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Jonny: reality and it's like it's not just like someone says (23:59):
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Jonny: this it's just this is a fact and (24:02):
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Jonny: that was just like something that like the rdf group had specifically designed to (24:05):
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Jonny: be doing and so like the the model of the world that like people keep trying (24:08):
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Jonny: to escape from but now need to return to but keep trying to escape to have to (24:13):
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Jonny: return to is that like when you make a statement in rdf like Like there's a (24:16):
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Jonny: difference between the way that like the language and the syntax and the systems (24:21):
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Jonny: designer thought about it as being literally like, (24:24):
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Jonny: like there are some like really remarkable quotes in the W3C archives. (24:26):
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Jonny: And I was like, I was trying to pull up earlier, but it's like that, (24:32):
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Jonny: like this, this one quote from Brian McBride, 2001. (24:35):
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Jonny: So this would have been just like only a couple of years after the project formally launched at W3C. (24:40):
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Jonny: That's like RDF is not just a data model. The RDF specs should define a semantic (24:45):
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Jonny: so that an RDF statement on the web is interpreted as an assertion of that statement (24:49):
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Jonny: so that its author would be responsible in law as if it had been published in a newspaper. (24:54):
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Jonny: So these are like, they're supposed to be like legally binding documents in (24:58):
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Jonny: this way, where there is no such thing as an author. (25:04):
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Jonny: Someone says this, you know, that just like when in reality... (25:08):
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Jonny: Everything it has an author everything has (25:12):
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Jonny: a point of view and a perspective and just (25:15):
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Jonny: like was said by or written by somebody but like (25:18):
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Jonny: you know it took a while for even that that notion (25:22):
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Jonny: to be encoded in the language at all as like (25:25):
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Jonny: an expressible thing period adding the fourth (25:28):
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Jonny: item in the triplets like being able (25:31):
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Jonny: to say that this doesn't belong to the global graph of (25:33):
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Jonny: everything but in fact is my like local system of meaning and then but then (25:37):
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Jonny: like that just like this that you know you have to keep escaping that because (25:42):
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Jonny: it doesn't actually work because it's like the thing that i always come back (25:45):
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Jonny: to is i just like imagine if language worked this way where i have. (25:49):
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Jonny: To i want to use a word and i i have to use (25:54):
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Jonny: johnny's version of this word and so (25:57):
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Jonny: i have to to say like i had to go into like johnny.net slash (26:00):
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Jonny: this word and now i'm (26:03):
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Jonny: referring to that one and there's no way that i can make (26:06):
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Jonny: my own copy of this word it's like in the way that (26:09):
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Jonny: language works of just like you know we have these sort of like parallel representations (26:11):
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Jonny: of ideas and concepts and words and phrases (26:15):
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Jonny: that are like you know they're not the same at all (26:18):
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Jonny: even close to the same in between (26:21):
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Jonny: person to person when or even utterance to utterance and (26:24):
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Jonny: yet like we're trying to express like a system of meaning where (26:28):
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Jonny: there is one version of each of these things like no (26:31):
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Jonny: simply no one would do it like no one would if (26:34):
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Jonny: i had to go to the dictionary every time and look up each person's unique (26:37):
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Jonny: word and like use that or else it was meaningless then it just doesn't work (26:41):
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Jonny: so like and it's like intimately i don't know i don't want to just like trail (26:45):
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Jonny: off forever on here but it's like intimately related to the tooling problem (26:50):
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Jonny: where like theoretically and so like one of the authors of SCoS, (26:54):
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Jonny: like the Simple Knowledge Organization System, like the ontology and modeling (26:58):
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Jonny: system for like modeling relatedness and similarity. (27:02):
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Dorothea: It's how you do controlled vocabularies in RDF and it's actually quite functional, quite useful. (27:07):
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Dorothea: And if I'm not wrong, I think homosaurus is actually based on it. (27:12):
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Dorothea: That's your underlying, how you're modeling this stuff. (27:16):
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Jay: Yeah, it's SCoS, yeah. (27:20):
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Jonny: Yeah, it works pretty well. And like, so you'd imagine that like a tool like (27:21):
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Jonny: that, where you're able to say that something is a similar match, (27:26):
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Jonny: or this is exactly the same as this other thing would enable this kind of like expressive system. (27:29):
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Jonny: And it doesn't because doing all of those queries and lookups is preposterously (27:34):
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Jonny: expensive, because of just like the way that it's encoded as URIs, i.e. (27:39):
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Jonny: URLs, i.e. I need to hit a web server every time to actually retrieve this item, (27:44):
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Jonny: as opposed to Yeah, there's a any number of different web architectural models (27:50):
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Jonny: that that That could take, but that's the form it took. (27:54):
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Jonny: And so as a result, like, yeah, it's like intimately related to the tooling (27:56):
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Jonny: as well as the implementation of the technology, like in the same way that it (28:01):
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Jonny: is a reflection of the ideas behind it. (28:05):
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Dorothea: Right on. (28:08):
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Dorothea: So how are we doing, Sadie? Clear as mud? (28:09):
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Sadie: Yeah, just about. Like, I think the thing that gets me about linked data and, (28:12):
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Sadie: like, I haven't gone to library school. (28:20):
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Sadie: I have just, like, the most barest knowledge of cataloging and that kind of (28:22):
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Sadie: thing is, like, I'm a very practical, hands-on person. (28:26):
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Sadie: So, like, I have to dig into a system to be able to show, like, (28:29):
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Sadie: to really see how it works. (28:34):
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Dorothea: Oh, yeah, totally. (28:36):
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Sadie: Every time I have tried to do that, to even think about open linked data, (28:38):
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Sadie: I'm like, I don't, I don't see how this is usable. (28:42):
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Sadie: So that yeah, like you talked about, like, there is, there needs to be tools to be able to use it. (28:47):
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Sadie: It sounds like the heart of the problem at a lot of library technology where (28:53):
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Sadie: I keep saying this is just like there's a very small selection of vendors that (28:57):
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Sadie: have a very large control and they just keep conglomerating together. (29:04):
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Sadie: So there's like three now. (29:08):
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Sadie: And somehow libraries, who are the ones who are using the tools, (29:10):
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Sadie: are the most powerless people in the whole ecosystem of it, right? (29:14):
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Sadie: So a big topic at my work lately, and maybe a tangent here, is why the fuck are we still using SIP2? (29:17):
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Dorothea: Can't blame you on that one. (29:32):
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Sadie: I don't know if you're familiar with SIP2, Johnny. (29:36):
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Sadie: It's basically a protocol. So integrated library systems, ILS is the biggest (29:40):
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Sadie: software that libraries use to keep track of all of their stuff. (29:48):
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Sadie: It's basically the protocol that passes information between. (29:52):
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Sadie: These systems, right? So like a lot of vendors use SIP. (30:01):
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Sadie: So like, like Overdrive, you know, you like Overdrive has to know what you already (30:04):
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Sadie: have checked out to be able to enforce your limits. (30:09):
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Sadie: Like you can only have five books checked out. So it uses SIP to query that (30:12):
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Sadie: information from your library system, right? (30:16):
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Sadie: It is entirely unencrypted, clear text, unencrypted, and has been its entire life. (30:18):
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Sadie: And SIP2, which is different from the IT SIP, which is a VoIP protocol, (30:30):
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Sadie: which causes no end of confusion every time people are, like every time we have (30:35):
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Sadie: to talk to a vendor IT to figure out how to set something up. (30:40):
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Sadie: I just totally gave myself, if a single one of my coworkers is listening to (30:43):
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Sadie: this, I just absolutely gave myself away because I've had this conversation so many times. (30:47):
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Sadie: But yeah, it's like, and it's been in use for so long and all of these interlibrary, (30:53):
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Sadie: it's the only one that is actually usable, like actually, what's the word I'm (30:57):
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Sadie: looking? Agnostic, system agnostic. (31:02):
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Sadie: So it's starting to be replaced by a lot of APIs, but each API for each system is its own thing. (31:05):
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Sadie: So you have to wait for other like, you know, (31:12):
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Sadie: oh we could do this api we could do i (31:16):
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Sadie: don't know if this is true we could do almost api but we can't do sierra millennium's (31:19):
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Sadie: api so it's just like just like and in it it's just like why the fuck are we (31:22):
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Sadie: still using this and then we talk to people like vendors and they're just like (31:28):
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Sadie: well what's the problem and we're like it's completely clear text and requires (31:31):
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Sadie: extra tunneling to be able (31:37):
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Sadie: to actually keep our patron data over like not readable over the internet and i've asked. (31:40):
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Dorothea: It all over the entire internet. (31:46):
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Sadie: For anybody and like looking at the (31:47):
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Sadie: strings it's literally like library card number name (31:50):
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Sadie: full name address you know number of (31:53):
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Sadie: checkouts like it's just like it's it's so ridiculous (31:57):
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Sadie: and people are still just like well i don't (32:00):
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Sadie: i don't understand what the problem is until you talk to an (32:03):
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Sadie: ipt person and you say it's in clear text it's completely (32:06):
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Sadie: unencrypted and they go oh that's bad (32:09):
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Sadie: but no libraries have like the power to go to these freaking vendors and just (32:13):
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Sadie: be like you have to figure something else out something has to be worked out (32:18):
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Sadie: but it's going to end up being you know oclc who does that kind of stuff or (32:23):
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Sadie: something like that and then yeah it'd. (32:28):
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Dorothea: Be nice out right and. (32:30):
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Sadie: Yeah they're. (32:32):
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Dorothea: They're vendor patsies that's That's all we are. (32:33):
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Sadie: In a lot of ways, yeah. (32:36):
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Justin: Yeah, what was it Bree said in the Skullcom Discord? ACAB includes Niso. (32:38):
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Justin: Yeah. (32:44):
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Dorothea: Absolutely. (32:47):
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Sadie: So like, I still don't think I understand entirely what linked data is, (32:49):
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Sadie: but I, I do think that I like, I can start to get to it if, if you know what (32:55):
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Sadie: I mean, because yeah, like it's, it's just, it's a system. (33:01):
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Sadie: It's a system to connect data to other data in meaningful ways and it once had (33:04):
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Sadie: the promise to actually help libraries figure shit out and it has completely (33:11):
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Sadie: kind of shit the bed on that is that is is that an accurate that's. (33:16):
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Dorothea: That's completely accurate i still have tiny little sparks of hope Oh, I do. (33:23):
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Jay: Did we describe why it's called the semantic web? (33:30):
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Dorothea: Oh, I don't think we did. Johnny, I'll leave you that one. (33:35):
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Jonny: It's a really simple story. It's like being like web happened, (33:38):
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Jonny: right? And so web is documents with links between them. (33:42):
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Jonny: But those links are meaningless. (33:45):
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Jonny: They're just the relationship from one page to another. (33:47):
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Jonny: And it's hard to imagine this in retrospect, (33:51):
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Jonny: respect of a web without search engines (33:54):
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Jonny: or without any sort of like overlay to them because (33:57):
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Jonny: like basically the way that everyone interacts with the web now (34:00):
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Jonny: is either through search or through some mediating discovery (34:03):
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Jonny: mechanism like you don't just like go on the web and then (34:07):
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Jonny: go to a url and then just be like well (34:10):
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Jonny: i'm here now and just like i've found the internet (34:13):
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Jonny: and like it said yeah so like that's like (34:16):
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Jonny: the way that the web was sort of designed and like (34:18):
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Jonny: the way that it's supposed to work is it just like it would be self-organizing where (34:22):
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Jonny: the like the literally like if you go back to like (34:25):
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Jonny: the founding I was like we will just have people that have (34:27):
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Jonny: lists of links on their personal websites and they will link everything together (34:30):
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Jonny: and then just like people will find their way from these like local nodes of (34:36):
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Jonny: meaning like and the imagination there was always that just like the web would (34:40):
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Jonny: be super easy for the average person to make a website on and that just like (34:43):
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Jonny: everyone one would basically have one. (34:48):
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Jonny: And that didn't work at all, not even close, (34:50):
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Jonny: not even from the very beginning, where just like, you know, (34:53):
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Jonny: this, it was the case where just like the ultra nerds that were on the internet (34:56):
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Jonny: at the very first part of it, still, you know, gravitated towards sort of like (35:00):
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Jonny: mediating platforms like bulletin board systems, and etc. (35:04):
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Jonny: So the semantic web was supposed to be a way of encoding computer readable information (35:07):
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Jonny: into the protocols of the web, and specifically into HTML documents that are, (35:12):
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Jonny: you know, that are XML, a dialect of XML. (35:17):
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Jonny: I don't even know how to describe the relationship between HTML and XML. (35:21):
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Jonny: But like, so that it would be possible to both annotate a given page and then (35:24):
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Jonny: also just like be able to link them together so that you'd have this sort of like, (35:29):
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Jonny: you know, coexistent between documents that people are on that have like, (35:33):
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Jonny: you know, human readable text, and then embedded within that and embedded between (35:38):
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Jonny: that are just sort of like, in this paragraph, I'm talking about this person. (35:42):
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Jonny: And like, then I can sort of like, say, go to that page and theoretically go (35:46):
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Jonny: and find backlinks to all the time that that person was mentioned or something like that. (35:52):
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Jonny: And so that's like why it's called like the semantic web is we're adding semantics (35:56):
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Jonny: to the web which formerly was just sort of like naked links and documents yep. (35:59):
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Jay: Like the computer could understand what that (36:04):
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Jay: johnny is a person because (36:08):
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Jay: it knows what those uris are and what they point to and it then can then tell (36:11):
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Jay: what the relationship between those are not in a way where it knows what a person (36:16):
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Jay: is but it knows what this uri is and if you use this uri then it sees other (36:21):
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Jay: things that have that uri and knows that they're people too And. (36:25):
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Jonny: There's a certain amount of magical thinking that like, because language sort (36:28):
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Jonny: of works this way, that it's like entirely relational and metaphor based and like, (36:34):
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Jonny: you know, the meaning of a word is only sensible in context of surrounding meanings (36:39):
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Jonny: and contrast with similar, you know, that just like meaning would emerge. (36:43):
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Jonny: And like again like that's sort (36:46):
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Jonny: of true like there's like like language does work like that just like (36:50):
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Jonny: sort of local negotiations over meaning and indigent but like you need to have (36:53):
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Jonny: the people there negotiating in order for it to work and that never really existed (36:57):
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Jonny: so just like so like there's and it sort of like points to one of the salient (37:02):
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Jonny: features that is both like it's like you know, eerily prescient, (37:07):
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Jonny: but also just like another one of these like critical pieces where we're talking (37:13):
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Jonny: about just like the missing tools, (37:16):
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Jonny: is like from the very beginning, like there's this 1999 piece in Scientific (37:18):
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Jonny: American that Tim Berners-Lee, that was like sort of like the public announcement (37:22):
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Jonny: of like, you know, the existence of the semantic web as a problem. (37:25):
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Dorothea: I remember reading that. I was at work. I remember reading it. (37:28):
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Jonny: And so is this wonderful document and just like that like is like this very (37:33):
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Jonny: pie in the sky kind of system of, you know, release about just like what it could be. (37:38):
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Jonny: And like, there's a bunch of just like really basic and obvious things that (37:42):
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Jonny: like, wow, we should really have the computers work like that. (37:46):
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Jonny: We're just like, you know, like the, the, the idea that I have a calendar appointment or whatever. (37:50):
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Jonny: Why can't my computer know that, like, I also have a photo that was taken on that day. (37:57):
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Jonny: So I can just like say, computer, find me the photos that were taken during (38:03):
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Jonny: this appointment on my calendar or something like that. (38:09):
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Jonny: So like a sort of universal acid for this data, where just like, (38:11):
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Jonny: I can just relate, you know, totally heterogeneous systems between one another. (38:15):
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Jonny: But the part that's like really, like, you know, come to be, (38:19):
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Jonny: we all like thinking about just like Like AI is like, you know, (38:23):
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Jonny: this year and this last year being like, it was always going to be dependent on compute. (38:26):
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Jonny: That it's just like, there's metadata there. (38:31):
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Jonny: But even from the very beginning, you need what Tim Bersley was talking about (38:34):
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Jonny: as agents, like as about just like little bots, little scripts or whatever that (38:38):
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Jonny: are running around getting all of this metadata around. (38:42):
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Jonny: And this is like around the time when Google and like the first algorithmic (38:44):
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Jonny: search engines were starting to exist. (38:49):
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Jonny: Exist so like this idea of crawlers and (38:51):
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Jonny: ingesting this information and making sense of it was like (38:54):
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Jonny: a relatively new one especially like at (38:57):
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Jonny: a mass scale like this and like that's but that's always been the tension we're (39:00):
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Jonny: just like like say just like talking about like what is it where do i touch (39:05):
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Jonny: it like how am i supposed to use that just like that was sort of always the (39:09):
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Jonny: intention with that just like (39:12):
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Jonny: you would have like a little computer butler thing that would just like be (39:13):
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Jonny: going out and you have your own set of commands to just sort of like, (39:18):
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Jonny: go get this for me, go fetch this for me. (39:22):
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Jonny: But again, it's never really materialized just because with what infrastructure (39:24):
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Jonny: does the average person have a constantly running bot that goes out and scrapes (39:31):
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Jonny: the web for them all the time? (39:35):
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Jonny: And so even from, yeah, there are a couple of moments in the history of the (39:37):
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Jonny: Mending Web of times when Google basically bought it. (39:42):
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Jonny: That happens actually several times. (39:46):
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Jonny: We're just like this sort of domestication of this process where like, (39:48):
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Jonny: now like when you think about it, like, where does it exist? How does it exist? (39:52):
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Jonny: Pretty much the only way that people usually interact with it is like the metadata, (39:56):
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Jonny: the open graph metadata and well, that open graph slightly different, (40:02):
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Jonny: but like the JSON LD document that you'll have at the top of your website header (40:05):
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Jonny: that is just like, using schema.org terms to say that this is a website about (40:08):
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Jonny: an organization or an event or whatever. (40:14):
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Jonny: And like as Justin was saying in the beginning, just like sometimes it makes (40:16):
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Jonny: the Google info boxes work. (40:20):
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Jonny: And like that's pretty much the most concrete realization that the average person (40:23):
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Jonny: has for linked data on the everyday. (40:27):
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Jonny: And that's because who owns the crawler? Google owns the crawler. (40:30):
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Jonny: And so it becomes something where you make metadata available to be crawled (40:34):
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Jonny: by Google in this very constrained, commercially focused context. (40:38):
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Jonny: But it's not a system of expression. (40:42):
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Jonny: And like, just one more thing is like, there's like these other technology that (40:45):
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Jonny: like, RDF-A, like this dialect of RDF, which is supposed to be like the thing (40:48):
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Jonny: that goes embedded in documents where like, as I'm writing, (40:53):
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Jonny: I will tag a particular paragraph as you know, with some, you know, (40:56):
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Jonny: semantic web tag or something like that. (41:01):
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Jonny: That's like arguably one of the most like (41:03):
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Jonny: attempts at making human a human link (41:06):
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Jonny: data like interface for that we're just like you could imagine i (41:10):
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Jonny: have like a document editing software or something (41:13):
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Jonny: like that and i can highlight a highlight a sentence and add a tag to it or (41:16):
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Jonny: whatever you know just like actually embedding this in documents that people (41:21):
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Jonny: actually use that is actually no longer supported by the main art like rdf parsing (41:24):
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Jonny: library rdf lib in python because it's complicated to parse, (41:30):
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Jonny: but also it's just sort of like, that's not really the important one. (41:35):
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Jonny: It's like, you know, for all these like mushy positional document tags and stuff (41:38):
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Jonny: like that, and people don't really want to know the information in context. (41:43):
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Jonny: They want it all split out into like, you know, something where I can do an (41:46):
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Jonny: HTTP request and just get the headers and that's it. (41:50):
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Jonny: And so like, it's like, it's just one of these mutating landscape of technology (41:54):
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Jonny: always ratchets more and more towards, (41:57):
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Jonny: it's intended for doing the (42:00):
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Jonny: big web of open data that you're not a part of but (42:03):
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Jonny: you get to experience through platforms and a (42:06):
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Jonny: lot of platforms are in fact powered by linked data (42:09):
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Jonny: at least if not rdf knowledge graph (42:13):
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Jonny: tm derivatives of that idea where (42:16):
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Jonny: like it is an extremely powerful set of (42:20):
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Jonny: of ideas but not for you (42:23):
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Jonny: so if you but if you are a company that exists as a giant conglomeration of (42:25):
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Jonny: data sets that you've bought by acquiring smaller companies over time it is (42:32):
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Jonny: an incredibly powerful system for integrating all of that information being (42:36):
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Jonny: able to do complex queries across them so in that piece for tim berners-lee. (42:40):
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Jay: Not for thee. (42:45):
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Jonny: Exactly and increasingly for (42:46):
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Jonny: the surveillance state and just like the people who (42:50):
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Jonny: have this nightmarish multi-sided market (42:53):
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Jonny: of selling your data to insurance (42:56):
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Jonny: providers at the same time as selling it to police at the same time as selling (42:59):
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Jonny: you back a little slice of it as well so like it's yeah the way that it exists (43:03):
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Jonny: now is largely in the shadows and that's by no means passive effort there's (43:08):
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Jonny: an active corralling and an active domestication of this set of ideas. (43:13):
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Dorothea: And to bring it back to tooling for just a second, (43:19):
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Dorothea: Some of the more pro-social, I guess I will use that word, experiments in this (43:23):
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Dorothea: space, like Wikidata, for example, (43:28):
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Dorothea: are already running up against the absolute limits of what you can do with linked (43:31):
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Dorothea: data if you're not, like, Google. (43:38):
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Dorothea: Google, they've already, and the technical details here completely escaped me, (43:40):
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Dorothea: but Wikidota has gotten too big for its britches. (43:45):
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Dorothea: The infrastructure literally cannot cope with it anymore, so they're sharding (43:48):
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Dorothea: it, is my understanding. (43:53):
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Dorothea: They're kind of splitting it down the middle and figuring out how to get the (43:55):
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Dorothea: two shards to talk to one another, which I'm sure is really exciting technically, (43:59):
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Dorothea: but wow, that's not great. (44:03):
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Dorothea: For those of us who are not Google, but are interested in this technology stack. (44:05):
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Jonny: Did you see the the cause of this this issue (44:10):
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Jonny: is that like it's the underlying database (44:14):
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Jonny: software blaze graph that it's running on amazon hired (44:17):
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Jonny: away all of the engineers so they're oh (44:21):
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Jonny: great yeah so all right typical so again this is like the big company is literally (44:24):
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Jonny: buying the underlying technologies we're just like you know the software needs (44:29):
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Jonny: maintenance you know that like that it needs maintenance and these constant (44:34):
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Jonny: improvements and just like to be able to handle an ever-growing stack of triples like Wikidata, (44:38):
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Jonny: you need to have active maintenance workers. And like, (44:43):
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Jonny: Who pays for open source work? Like, if I'm a software developer and Amazon (44:47):
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Jonny: says, here's, you know, 250K a year to make the, do the thing you were already (44:52):
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Jonny: doing for free, then it's like, sure, I have a family. (44:57):
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Jonny: You know, I, you know, I'd like to have, like, you know, go on vacation sometimes. (45:00):
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Jonny: And so, like, yeah, it's just like, yeah, actively, that, that was another moment (45:05):
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Jonny: of, like, yeah, actively poaching away the talent so that, like, (45:10):
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Jonny: the underlying technology can. (45:13):
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Dorothea: And I will say, for all that we are cultural heritage organizations founded (45:15):
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Dorothea: on the idea that culture should persist, (45:21):
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Dorothea: we're very bad in libraries and archives at admitting that software needs maintenance, (45:23):
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Dorothea: that standards need maintenance, right? (45:31):
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Dorothea: That's the SIP2 problem in a nutshell, though that was proprietary, actually. (45:34):
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Dorothea: So Ruth Kitchen-Tillman and I wrote an article, got published about a year ago, (45:40):
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Dorothea: about the ethics of linked data sustainability. (45:45):
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Dorothea: You can find it open access online. (45:48):
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Dorothea: And we took a pot shot, actually. Okay, we. I took a pot shot. This one was mine. (45:50):
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Dorothea: At information scientists. Okay? Because there are too many information scientists (45:57):
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Dorothea: who are serial project and standard abandoners. (46:03):
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Dorothea: They get grant money to do this fancy-dancy thing, and they get as far as it (46:08):
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Dorothea: being implemented in libraries. (46:16):
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Dorothea: And then they just wander away to write the next grant application and do the (46:19):
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Dorothea: next fancy-dancy thing. And then it rots. (46:24):
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Jonny: Totally. (46:26):
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Dorothea: Right, whatever they built, it rocks, because inevitably, they didn't build (46:27):
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Dorothea: it right in the first place, and I'm totally thinking about OEIPMH here, (46:31):
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Dorothea: since we have some Skulltom folks in the room, but SIP2 is another beautiful example. (46:34):
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Dorothea: Gosh, we are so bad at versioning stuff. (46:41):
undefined

Dorothea: It's a really basic idea. You gotta version stuff. You can never get it right the first time. (46:44):
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Dorothea: So yeah, I, in that article, took a pot shot at serial project abandoners and (46:50):
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Dorothea: said, funders, stop funding them. (46:56):
undefined

Dorothea: Ask what happened to their last (46:59):
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Dorothea: three projects. And if they're dead in the water, add some black mark. (47:01):
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Jonny: For real. Yeah, this is a general issue in any sort of publicly funded tooling space. (47:06):
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Jonny: Is that just like... I was allegedly on some review panel for some funding agency (47:13):
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Jonny: that is theoretically talking about software sustainability. (47:21):
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Jonny: And that was a completely novel concept that just like what we want to do is (47:25):
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Jonny: we want to fund sustainable software ecosystems. (47:32):
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Jonny: That just like we're not trying to start a new project. We're not trying to (47:35):
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Jonny: like, you know, fund the new feature, but just like, these are the already existing (47:38):
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Jonny: things that are happening in open source. (47:42):
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Jonny: And let's just keep that going, like paying for like, like stuff like documentation (47:45):
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Jonny: and like making the tests work and like, you know, years and years of technical debt. (47:50):
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Jonny: And like security audits yeah totally yeah (47:55):
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Jonny: and please yeah and so this is like this is (47:59):
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Jonny: one thing like this one of one of my entry points into thinking about semantic (48:01):
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Jonny: web and thinking about just like linked open data was just like initially (48:04):
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Jonny: thinking about because i was like living with someone who is like working in (48:08):
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Jonny: metadata in a library at the time and there was this like increasing cry of (48:11):
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Jonny: just like the we all know the journal system is broken and like there's this (48:15):
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Jonny: recurring strain of papers that are just sort of like let's just like make the (48:19):
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Jonny: libraries do it you You know, just like that, (48:23):
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Jonny: just like we can sort of like get libraries to host a bunch of journal like things, (48:25):
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Jonny: journal like overlays or whatever, completely ignoring the reality of work and (48:32):
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Jonny: the reality of bureaucracy in libraries that just like. (48:37):
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Jonny: And and and so like, you know, you wonder who I'm talking about. (48:41):
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Dorothea: Oh, I don't have to wonder. I let him talk it out. (48:47):
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Jonny: Yeah and and so (48:49):
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Jonny: like that just like this is where like (48:52):
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Jonny: and on the one hand it seems like an obvious thing where just like of (48:55):
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Jonny: course like it seems like libraries in general (48:58):
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Jonny: in the abstract should be invested in just like you know maintaining some (49:01):
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Jonny: their catalogs at least but just (49:05):
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Jonny: like also the all the other things that just like you know that are being archived (49:08):
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Jonny: and cataloged and just like you know exist in libraries and just (49:11):
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Jonny: like making that as available as a public catalog on like sure surely they're (49:14):
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Jonny: already doing stuff like that so it shouldn't be that much of additional effort (49:18):
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Jonny: to have an institutional repository that acts like a journal and like can link (49:22):
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Jonny: together these things but as y'all know yeah i keep. (49:26):
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Dorothea: Coming back to tooling. (49:33):
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Jonny: Yeah tooling. (49:34):
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Dorothea: Was shit the tooling for open access is and always has been shit. (49:35):
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Jonny: Right. Yeah. And so it's just a matter of like, that like, there's there is (49:42):
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Jonny: this universe of like, we're like, okay, we could get sort of some of these things aligned, (49:48):
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Jonny: like funding priorities for maintaining sustainable software. Okay. (49:53):
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Jonny: If we can then like, get some sort of like IT consortium to help out with like, (49:57):
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Jonny: maybe, you know, quote, unquote, public cloud. (50:03):
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Jonny: So it's not the case that just like every library needs to have like an on prem IT team. (50:05):
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Jonny: That just like there are some of these things that could like (50:09):
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Jonny: lock into place that just could theoretically make some of (50:12):
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Jonny: this work but just like that's just not the way academic work is (50:15):
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Jonny: done generally and just like that's just not the way it's structured to make (50:18):
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Jonny: these sort of like long lasting infrastructural efforts like as you say that (50:22):
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Jonny: these are just like grant cycle to grant cycle let's just like ride to the next (50:27):
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Jonny: thing and even within so like part of my role in the last (50:30):
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Jonny: six months of work it's like i'm working with actually a lovely group of people who i who i i. (50:36):
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Jonny: Like and they have welcomed me and so i'm not trying to speak ill of (50:41):
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Jonny: them at all but just like this is a linked open data project and (50:44):
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Jonny: basically what i've been trying to do for the last like six months is like pay (50:47):
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Jonny: down technical debt we're just like there's this like really good idea (50:50):
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Jonny: of this like this way of having authorable (50:54):
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Jonny: linked data schemas doesn't require you to be (50:57):
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Jonny: part of the priesthood to be able to describe what exists in (51:00):
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Jonny: your reality but it's just like i didn't (51:03):
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Jonny: really work it's just sort of like they're (51:07):
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Jonny: just like that it's just like the people that are concerned with the (51:10):
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Jonny: modeling part about the the like (51:14):
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Jonny: what you know what is this kind of thing do we (51:17):
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Jonny: put it in this category like this like are not usually (51:20):
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Jonny: the same people who are just like going to be able to write a really good implementation (51:23):
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Jonny: of that and so like trying to figure (51:26):
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Jonny: out how to make those collaborations happen as well because (51:29):
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Jonny: this is another point where like i i don't see (51:32):
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Jonny: this as a thing that really could exist or come (51:35):
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Jonny: from any sort of startup like rest in (51:38):
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Jonny: peace to the solid project which i have been trying to find for several years (51:41):
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Jonny: and i keep seeing little promising scraps of it but this is like so solid was (51:46):
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Jonny: like the thing that tim berners-lee was like this will be the semantic web like (51:50):
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Jonny: the thing that we're trying to like do to so it's like it has like (51:56):
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Jonny: crisis of conscious, like actually the web sort of sucks. (51:59):
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Jonny: Like, like I think around like 2015 and 2016 and like, you know, (52:02):
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Jonny: starting to be just like, okay, let's try and make solid as like a way for people (52:07):
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Jonny: to do the, like the, the more like vernacularist dream of the semantic web where I have my. (52:10):
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Jonny: Like this, now they're talking about like activity pods. (52:17):
undefined

Jonny: Like I have my little unit of my semantic web, like graph and information graph. (52:18):
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Jonny: But that quickly got bogged down in the academic cycle. No one could manage a project. (52:25):
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Jonny: Then they spun that off into a startup. And wouldn't you know it, (52:30):
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Jonny: once that happened, then it became owning your own data was a bug, not a feature. (52:34):
undefined

Jonny: And so now you're supposed to be pushed on to renting a cloud server for it and so on and so forth. (52:39):
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Jonny: So I think that this doesn't come from startups or from any sort of company. (52:45):
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Jonny: It also doesn't come from the scattered wastes of open source world. (52:50):
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Jonny: They're just like, you can't just like ask people to do it for free. (52:54):
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Jonny: And it also doesn't come from this like local efforts of like trying to make (52:57):
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Jonny: tools for like an individual institution. (53:01):
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Jonny: And so just like what's left is like, you know, we need to use some sort of (53:03):
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Jonny: public funding and try and rally public funding in a way that it's not designed (53:07):
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Jonny: to be allocated in order to like make these kinds of technologies. (53:11):
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Jonny: And also the belief that there should be these technologies in the first place (53:15):
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Jonny: in order to make that real. (53:20):
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Jonny: And so like, that's, this is like this unending knot of like, (53:22):
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Jonny: who do we, who is the next little thread that we need to pull in order to make this large tapestry? (53:26):
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Jonny: But then like you you're dealing (53:31):
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Jonny: with 25 years of baggage at the (53:35):
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Jonny: same time so it's like a lot of the people that are still in (53:37):
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Jonny: that space either have distanced (53:40):
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Jonny: themselves from it and i have and look back on it (53:44):
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Jonny: with this chain of mixed emotion mixed emotional (53:47):
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Jonny: memories but i don't want to touch that anymore or they're (53:50):
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Jonny: like in some way still true believers that just (53:54):
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Jonny: like what do you you mean nothing is actually broken it's totally (53:57):
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Jonny: fine and like you just need to learn how (54:00):
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Jonny: to do it good and so yeah so like (54:02):
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Jonny: like and so this is like one of the reasons why (54:07):
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Jonny: i'm just like like we were talking about this earlier today just being like (54:10):
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Jonny: that in some ways like talking about like (54:13):
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Jonny: serial project abandoners protocol abandoners that just like there (54:15):
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Jonny: needs to be like a break in a way that's like backwards compatible we bring (54:18):
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Jonny: the past with us or like or have some way to like carry it through with us but (54:22):
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Jonny: we're not beholden by all of this baggage that and and so i don't know like (54:26):
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Jonny: talking about just like what happens in the future i guess i don't know if we've even gotten past the. (54:31):
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Jonny: Expository part of what even are we talking about yet but like maybe i'm jumping (54:38):
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Jonny: the gun there but like yeah just last last thoughts on that idea is like that's (54:43):
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Jonny: another part like the twin, (54:48):
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Jonny: entry points for me into this whole line of thinking or just like thinking about (54:51):
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Jonny: just like what could be an alternative to scholarly communication and publishing. (54:53):
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Jonny: It just like, it shouldn't be possible for me to throw stuff up on the web and (54:58):
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Jonny: then have it be part of this sort of like blob of information without like a (55:03):
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Jonny: lot of gatekeepers in the way. (55:07):
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Jonny: The other part of it is that it's like, even long before I got interested in (55:08):
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Jonny: it, I keep coming across these various like graveyards of things that are just like. (55:12):
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Jonny: This is a really cool idea, like a browser extension that like everywhere I (55:17):
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Jonny: go, I can make sort of personal annotations and not just like bookmarks, (55:23):
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Jonny: but just like I highlight this section, (55:27):
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Jonny: and then I can relate it and share it to my friends like, oh, (55:28):
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Jonny: actually, that extension was for like Netscape 6.0. (55:30):
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Jonny: And like, was abandoned 20 years ago. And like, no one has thought about this ever since. (55:34):
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Jonny: And just like this long string of just like dead projects that are (55:39):
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Jonny: that are exactly like this because again like (55:42):
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Jonny: didn't you imagine like the kinds of open source projects that work and (55:45):
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Jonny: like are sustainable are usually ones that have some (55:48):
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Jonny: material tangible benefit for the (55:52):
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Jonny: people that use them day to day like this is a tool i have active use for or (55:54):
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Jonny: their baseline behind the scenes infrastructural work that like a lot of companies (55:59):
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Jonny: that will just like sort of rely on them like the but the types of like this (56:04):
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Jonny: niche of technology just like what what you have to have in order to use it are a website. (56:09):
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Jonny: So that rules out 99% of all people. (56:13):
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Jonny: And then be like a website where you are deeply in control of the HTML that goes on that page. (56:16):
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Jonny: And that rules out 80% of the remaining 1%. (56:25):
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Jonny: And so like, that just like, there just, yeah, there never was a time when it (56:29):
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Jonny: had like an actual practical use. (56:33):
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Jonny: And this is something that just like gets called out as early as the The earliest (56:36):
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Jonny: I've seen of people saying, what is the point of all this was like in 2005 and 2006, (56:40):
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Jonny: where just like there's a series of these blog posts of just like abandoning the semantic web. (56:46):
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Jonny: It's like, no one actually figured out why we're doing this at all. (56:51):
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Jonny: Like, there's one interesting example of like music annotation, (56:55):
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Jonny: where just like it's sort of like a peer to peer ish music system. (57:00):
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Jonny: And then that's it. Like the rest of it is totally pointless. (57:05):
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Jonny: Like why would i ever do this in the first like invest (57:08):
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Jonny: all this time into learning these incredibly complicated parts of (57:11):
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Jonny: it because like one of the things that we're missing in the exposition stack (57:15):
undefined

Jonny: is the exposition section is like the sort of (57:18):
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Jonny: stack of things that that the data is (57:21):
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Jonny: like you have the triples part which we talked about but then (57:24):
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Jonny: you also have like ontologies and schemas and just like the way that these things (57:27):
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Jonny: all sort of relate to get in it took me a year to even and figure out what these (57:31):
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Jonny: meant and what they look like and why they existed and just like why is a schema (57:37):
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Jonny: different than an ontology? (57:43):
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Jonny: That seems like the same sort of thing but there's like different roles in the (57:45):
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Jonny: ecosystem and also definitely different... (57:50):
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Jonny: Just to say that... (57:54):
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Dorothea: Why does neither of them have record constraint language? (57:55):
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Jay: Ontology means that your professor goes on tangents about first-order logic (57:59):
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Jay: when you're learning it. (58:03):
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Dorothea: That's right. (58:04):
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Jay: Yeah. (58:05):
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Justin: And schemas are on schema.org. (58:07):
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Jonny: Exactly. (58:09):
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Justin: That's how you know there's schemas. (58:10):
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Jay: Also, was the music project you were talking about linked jazz? (58:11):
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Jonny: I will look up this. It's in this blog post, Abandoning the Semantic Web. I'll see if I can find it. (58:14):
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Jay: It's linked jazz rules. rules yeah. (58:21):
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Dorothea: That's a great little site i love it that. (58:24):
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Jay: Was like the first i ever heard of link data i was like an undergrad still working (58:26):
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Jay: in a music library sure and my and my like mentor professor or not professor (58:30):
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Jay: my mentor like boss was like this is the coolest thing i've ever seen in my life. (58:36):
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Dorothea: Well and and and music in particular in a library context is actually a really (58:42):
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Dorothea: wonderfully subversive place for for late data to get a foothold because mark for music saw. (58:48):
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Jay: So bad oh it's terrible music cataloging like music copyright is something that (58:55):
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Jay: even seasoned professionals will not touch um yeah music cataloging is its own (59:03):
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Jay: has its own rules i mean heaven. (59:10):
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Dorothea: But but wow mark was just not designed for that and it shows. (59:12):
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Jay: Oh it shows it shows yeah back to. (59:16):
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Justin: The explaining part of things as well one of (59:23):
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Justin: the one of the main benefits always sold about (59:25):
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Justin: link data is that since the web (59:29):
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Justin: is sort of a page or document focused sharing of information this would allow (59:32):
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Justin: subsets of information to be pulled like johnny said pulling like all the headers (59:37):
undefined

Justin: from an article with a request the thing is that like without out like I could pull 9,000. (59:42):
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Justin: I don't know 500 fields from a mark record what do i (59:51):
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Justin: need that for because i don't know anything about the context (59:53):
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Justin: of it uh without the full document plus that's (59:56):
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Justin: i'm guessing that's probably why it's so computationally heavy (59:59):
undefined

Justin: is that everything has to be done through servers whereas documents can be retained (01:00:03):
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Justin: locally and it's just mostly just text files right so it's sort of the same (01:00:07):
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Justin: problem blockchain had where everything had to be done computationally And that's (01:00:13):
undefined

Justin: why it took 20 minutes to buy a donut because it had to get pushed out to like 20 ledgers. (01:00:16):
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Justin: And instead, this is like, if I want to query information, it has to go through (01:00:23):
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Justin: different servers, which I think was kind of the idea of websites that heal. I have it pulled up. (01:00:27):
undefined

Justin: It's a John Rhodes blog post. (01:00:33):
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Justin: But when Johnny was talking about bots, I think that was the idea was websites (01:00:35):
undefined

Justin: like link rot would happen between them. (01:00:41):
undefined

Justin: And eventually bots would just kind of communicate server to server constantly (01:00:43):
undefined

Justin: and then just fix links and they would heal themselves and that was kind of (01:00:48):
undefined

Justin: the idea and that blog post ended with if anyone wants to write this i'll help (01:00:52):
undefined

Justin: but until then but that's the thing is like it's very difficult to do that because (01:00:56):
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Justin: if you've ever worked with like government websites. (01:01:01):
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Justin: Particularly like healthcare websites every presidential administration stuff moves entire (01:01:04):
undefined

Justin: divisions of the government and so they're on completely different domains and (01:01:10):
undefined

Justin: that's why government websites always break and like really important ones and that's also why the the, (01:01:14):
undefined

Justin: government tends to do a lot of like dot coms now where it's just like healthcare (01:01:20):
undefined

Justin: healthcare.com okay just go there and we'll point it wherever it ends up because (01:01:24):
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Justin: trying to keep because i was an allied health librarian and trying to keep those (01:01:29):
undefined

Justin: pages about like the affordable care act up to (01:01:34):
undefined

Justin: date in libguides i mean thank god has a very good link checker but i constantly (01:01:37):
undefined

Justin: had to run that link checker because those things broke all the time they. (01:01:42):
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Jay: Don't even keep their pearls or whatever it is that they use because like one (01:01:47):
undefined

Jay: of them one year in grad school i was the the gov docs librarian graduate assistant (01:01:51):
undefined

Jay: and half of my job was just like going through sudoc stuff and then And also, (01:01:55):
undefined

Jay: like, checking the pearls or whatever permalink system that government websites (01:02:01):
undefined

Jay: and online GovDocs uses. (01:02:07):
undefined

Jay: And just finding all of the broken ones, which was all of them. (01:02:09):
undefined

Jay: They don't even maintain their (01:02:14):
undefined

Jay: permalinks. Yeah. Which is the point of permalinks, is so that the back... (01:02:16):
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Jay: The URL itself can change. (01:02:22):
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Dorothea: Well, if I... Can I write on OCLC again? (01:02:24):
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Jay: Yeah, always. (01:02:28):
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Dorothea: Yeah, that was actually another example that Ruth and I wrote about in our piece, was OCLC and Perl.org, (01:02:30):
undefined

Dorothea: which was not originally OCLCs, it was a grassroots little thing for okay, (01:02:39):
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Dorothea: here's a place where you can mint permalinks, and we'll keep the database of (01:02:44):
undefined

Dorothea: where they went to, and everything will just work, (01:02:50):
undefined

Dorothea: and we'll happy permalink utopia and then (01:02:52):
undefined

Dorothea: with absolutely no warning some (01:02:55):
undefined

Dorothea: years after oclc took (01:02:58):
undefined

Dorothea: over pearl.org and made a very loud (01:03:02):
undefined

Dorothea: statement about how it was very important and (01:03:05):
undefined

Dorothea: they were going to maintain it and definitely uh it (01:03:08):
undefined

Dorothea: broke they broke it the the person i (01:03:11):
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Dorothea: i don't know the details i think (01:03:14):
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Dorothea: the the person who had been maintaining it left retired (01:03:17):
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Dorothea: who even knows but pearl org just completely broke oclc of course didn't give (01:03:21):
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Dorothea: a fuck and it remained broken for like several years and now the internet archive (01:03:27):
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Dorothea: eventually took it over and they don't give a fuck so you can't actually get any support for it. (01:03:34):
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Dorothea: And a bunch of innocent third parties who believed OCLC's lies and gleefully (01:03:40):
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Dorothea: minted all kinds of pearls because they thought that infrastructure was going (01:03:48):
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Dorothea: to stick around, dot burn. (01:03:53):
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Dorothea: Right? This idea that Justin, I believe, was talking about of self-healing websites. (01:03:56):
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Dorothea: Right, that is nonsense. (01:04:02):
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Dorothea: That is garbage. The world does not work that way. The world needs maintenance. (01:04:04):
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Jonny: Yeah and and so like there's like this whole nest (01:04:09):
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Jonny: of ideas about like roads not taken in the internet with a (01:04:13):
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Jonny: lot of this because it's like i have the same feeling about just like (01:04:15):
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Jonny: permanent ideas and like and as (01:04:18):
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Jonny: i do about just like in general when i see like a yet another platform for scholarly (01:04:22):
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Jonny: communication or like we're going to fix the ills of like academia by making (01:04:27):
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Jonny: yet another platform is that just like this is intrinsically a political one (01:04:31):
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Jonny: where and it puts And it's one where you are putting power in the hands of a (01:04:35):
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Jonny: specific organization that just like, (01:04:40):
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Jonny: and the longevity of that is strictly social. (01:04:41):
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Jonny: We're just like, it's the same way just like permalinks exist as long as the organization exists. (01:04:45):
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Jonny: And so like I have in general sort of like more faith than average that archive.org (01:04:51):
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Jonny: will continue to exist in the next year, (01:04:58):
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Jonny: although they are sort of like damaging that reputation lately to sort of like, (01:05:00):
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Jonny: like, just like, you know, anyway, (01:05:05):
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Jonny: we won't go there just being sort of like. (01:05:08):
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Jonny: I think that they have good longevity plans for their (01:05:11):
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Jonny: archive of the web okay but and i (01:05:14):
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Jonny: also in general think that like the doi system (01:05:17):
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Jonny: is probably not going anywhere but that's largely because (01:05:20):
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Jonny: it's like you know one of the mechanisms for extracting billions (01:05:24):
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Jonny: of dollars from public funding every year then just like so there's (01:05:27):
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Jonny: like social reasons why these things persist but it's like there's the major (01:05:29):
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Jonny: thing that was not taken like why the like as you're saying just like the web (01:05:35):
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Jonny: doesn't work in such a way where it would be possible to do self-healing websites (01:05:39):
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Jonny: or self-healing links is because it's designed to be a client to server, (01:05:43):
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Jonny: you go to a place and get something that someone else controls entirely. (01:05:48):
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Jonny: And like, you're not actually supposed to have any agency in this world. (01:05:51):
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Jonny: And like, there's good reasons for that. Don't get me wrong. (01:05:56):
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Jonny: But just like, this is like one of the true things about linked open data is that just like, (01:05:58):
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Jonny: it needs to be peer to peer, The way that it could conceivably work is as a (01:06:03):
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Jonny: peer-to-peer system where it's possible to do efficient querying and caching (01:06:10):
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Jonny: between a bunch of different peers. (01:06:16):
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Jonny: So it's designed to be distributing labor in this way instead of every time (01:06:18):
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Jonny: someone updates a link or makes a new record, (01:06:24):
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Jonny: everyone has to go and hit this one server to get this one URI that represents (01:06:27):
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Jonny: this core concept or whatever. (01:06:32):
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Jonny: And so as long as that doesn't exist, there's this duality of this beautiful idea of, (01:06:35):
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Jonny: of basing semantic web and linked data on URIs? (01:06:44):
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Jonny: Is that just like, okay, and elegant simplicity of this idea that the identifier (01:06:48):
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Jonny: is actually a location, that like location and identity are the same thing. (01:06:53):
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Jonny: And when I go to that location, I'm supposed to get something useful from it. (01:06:57):
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Jonny: And then that allows me to go to the next thing. That's like a wonderful, wonderful idea. (01:07:02):
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Jonny: But in reality, it doesn't work at all because like identity and location are not the same thing. (01:07:06):
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Jonny: That like i didn't and because you know (01:07:13):
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Jonny: for one one reason is identities change and like (01:07:16):
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Jonny: that like that like and so like there's this (01:07:19):
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Jonny: like you know classic thing that (01:07:22):
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Jonny: everyone always reference on the web is that it's like cool uris don't change (01:07:25):
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Jonny: that's another tim berners-lee classic it's like actually all (01:07:28):
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Jonny: uris change all the time and like and for that to be something where just like (01:07:31):
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Jonny: you You have a polemic trying to force something to behave in a way that it (01:07:37):
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Jonny: doesn't rather than adapting to the reality of that thing than just like, (01:07:43):
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Jonny: yes, you buy yourself in an infinite failure. (01:07:47):
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Jonny: And so like one of the there's this. (01:07:49):
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Jonny: Raising your hand. (01:07:54):
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Jay: I just want to jump in. Yeah, we do the raise hand thing to like you can keep (01:07:56):
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Jay: going. And then when you're done, Sadie will say something. (01:08:00):
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Jonny: But also just like interrupt. I actually would start trying to make some notes (01:08:03):
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Jonny: to organize this thought, cause this is a long idea. So like, I, but like, yeah. (01:08:07):
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Sadie: Oh, I've been thinking a lot about the purpose of a system is what it does. (01:08:12):
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Jonny: Completely. (01:08:20):
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Sadie: Right. Not what it thinks, not what it was designed to do, because we all know how design goes awry. (01:08:21):
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Sadie: But yeah, the purpose of a system is what it does. (01:08:30):
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Dorothea: Right on. (01:08:34):
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Sadie: I don't remember where I saw that. I love systems theory. (01:08:35):
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Jay: Yeah, right. (01:08:38):
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Sadie: Right. (01:08:39):
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Jonny: So if you, if anyone has ever maintained a website or any sort of web technology, (01:08:39):
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Jonny: we're just like, if the intention of this thing is to be liberating and freeing, (01:08:44):
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Jonny: it certainly doesn't feel that way. (01:08:49):
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Jonny: That just like that, like, you know what it would take to actually maintain a URL for forever. (01:08:51):
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Jonny: Like if that's the way the web is supposed to be, that the purpose of the web (01:08:57):
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Jonny: is to like put these documents on the web. (01:09:00):
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Jonny: Like it didn't, it doesn't do that. So yeah, exactly. (01:09:02):
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Jonny: That just like the purpose of the system is different. We're just like, and like, (01:09:05):
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Jonny: again like thinking about just like all the ways that the technical (01:09:09):
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Jonny: development has been stunted by the you know commercialization of (01:09:12):
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Jonny: the web that just like precluded a lot of these things from existing is (01:09:15):
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Jonny: like it's not an accident it's so like so (01:09:18):
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Jonny: one of like one of the ways the ways that linked data is working en masse right (01:09:21):
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Jonny: now in a pretty invisible way is the fediverse and this is like what we were (01:09:26):
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Jonny: talking about the last time i was on here so i won't belabor the point but it's (01:09:30):
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Jonny: just like that that's built on linked data at least in the abstract and this is sort (01:09:34):
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Jonny: of fascinating like realization of that we're just like (01:09:38):
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Jonny: like for example like macedon like the largest implementation of (01:09:41):
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Jonny: that does not actually use linked data as its internal data model that's all (01:09:45):
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Jonny: like a postgres database that then it's sort of just like synthesizes json ld (01:09:50):
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Jonny: out of and like as like there's benefits and trade-offs that we're just like (01:09:55):
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Jonny: as a result it sort of doesn't do all (01:10:01):
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Jonny: of the linked data parts of what ActivityPub was supposed to do. (01:10:04):
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Jonny: But there's the other, like, one other major alternative to this is Pleroma (01:10:09):
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Jonny: and Dekoma, like the fork of Pleroma that is based on a graph database. (01:10:14):
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Jonny: And that can do a bunch of really interesting things. (01:10:19):
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Jonny: But it also is, like, always crashing all the time and, like, (01:10:23):
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Jonny: sort of hard to, too, because it's like, you know, think about just like, (01:10:28):
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Jonny: because social networks are networks, it's like easily modeled by a graph. (01:10:32):
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Jonny: And, and so doing something as simple as just like, there's this notion of like (01:10:37):
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Jonny: this containers and these ordered collections and stuff like that in activity pub. (01:10:41):
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Jonny: And one ends like this, I have, you know, obviously lots of feelings about this, (01:10:45):
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Jonny: this particular spec, but like, one of them is I have. (01:10:49):
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Jonny: A this notion of who i'm addressing my message to (01:10:53):
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Jonny: and i should be able to address it to whoever (01:10:56):
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Jonny: i want to that i have i can address it to this one controlled (01:11:00):
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Jonny: ontology term public and that's just like i'm sending it to (01:11:03):
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Jonny: the world but also it should be possible for me to have collections (01:11:06):
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Jonny: of people and like i can address it to (01:11:09):
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Jonny: this collection of people and so it's like in that way i (01:11:12):
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Jonny: have a graph and then that graph is. (01:11:15):
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Jonny: Modeled like and all the relationships are modeled within in activity publishers (01:11:18):
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Jonny: being like i'm allowed to send it to these people and i (01:11:20):
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Jonny: want to send it to this subset of them in this particular case (01:11:24):
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Jonny: and so you can do stuff like that in (01:11:27):
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Jonny: a coma employment like i like the ui for it is a little less than (01:11:30):
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Jonny: what could be desired but that's not something you can do in macedon where (01:11:33):
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Jonny: each one of those addressing features has to be carefully (01:11:36):
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Jonny: architected from like as a as a database query (01:11:39):
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Jonny: so like there's a this this tension of (01:11:42):
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Jonny: just like okay we try and do it the semantic web way has the (01:11:46):
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Jonny: beautiful possibilities but it's like really hard to implement and one (01:11:49):
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Jonny: of the things that's hardest that was extremely like big reach and (01:11:52):
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Jonny: was really only like done and made work (01:11:56):
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Jonny: by just the sheer hegemony of mastodon as (01:11:58):
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Jonny: like you know the the thing that if it does something everyone (01:12:01):
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Jonny: else has to adapt around it is like implementing editing (01:12:04):
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Jonny: like you know thinking about just like i have (01:12:08):
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Jonny: a post i want to edit that post that means i have have to propagate (01:12:10):
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Jonny: that new version out to everybody else and so (01:12:13):
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Jonny: like thinking about just like what it would take to have like these (01:12:16):
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Jonny: sort of self-healing websites or just like the ability for the (01:12:19):
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Jonny: web to adapt to change is like you need to have that expectation that just like (01:12:22):
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Jonny: everything that i know about i should be able to receive changes and be able (01:12:27):
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Jonny: to propagate those among the people in the same way that just like that's how (01:12:31):
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Jonny: rumors and horizontal information transfer works generally is that just like. (01:12:35):
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Jonny: Oh, I heard that this new thing happened, (01:12:39):
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Jonny: and I tell my friends about it, and just like, you know, maybe and doing so (01:12:42):
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Jonny: in a way that's like actually safe, and, (01:12:45):
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Jonny: that is resistant to counterfeiting is a remarkably hard thing to retrofit into (01:12:49):
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Jonny: a system and so like that's like like. (01:12:55):
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Jay: How do we make the web actually rhizomatic. (01:12:58):
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Jonny: Yeah and yeah and this is (01:13:00):
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Jonny: like again it goes back to the like the dawn of (01:13:03):
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Jonny: the web browser and what it is as a technology is (01:13:06):
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Jonny: like this idea of the read write web we're just like it (01:13:09):
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Jonny: should be just as easy to write as it is to read (01:13:12):
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Jonny: on the web and like you know obviously controlled by (01:13:15):
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Jonny: permissions in some way but like this that (01:13:18):
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Jonny: experiment died basically when netscape (01:13:21):
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Jonny: won in the early browser wars but then (01:13:25):
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Jonny: it persisted in the form of wikis and this notion (01:13:28):
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Jonny: of soft security where just like how do (01:13:31):
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Jonny: we make that work is we make it so that doing (01:13:34):
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Jonny: this kind of like you know we allow stuff stuff (01:13:37):
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Jonny: to happen but then make it so it can't damage the (01:13:40):
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Jonny: system in some profound way we're just like if someone (01:13:43):
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Jonny: does something they're not supposed to do you know someone goes and (01:13:46):
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Jonny: vandalizes a wikipedia page or whatever then like sure the next person that (01:13:49):
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Jonny: goes and loads that page might see a bunch of vandalism and that's bad but like (01:13:54):
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Jonny: it's not it doesn't ruin the page it doesn't break it forever and completely (01:13:59):
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Jonny: like it's possible for me to revert the old version of it and and so on and so forth. (01:14:04):
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Jonny: So like, and that's a radically different political vision than the, (01:14:09):
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Jonny: most of the web stack that we're familiar with. So just like that, it's like that. (01:14:15):
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Jonny: Ultimately, for this technology to work, it (01:14:20):
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Jonny: needs to be constructed on a different set of political (01:14:23):
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Jonny: primitives that include other people existing and being able to do stuff in (01:14:26):
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Jonny: a way that just like is very uncomfortable for like most of the people who design (01:14:34):
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Jonny: web technology nowadays to think of that as being I'm going to design a platform (01:14:39):
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Jonny: that I administer for other people. (01:14:43):
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Jonny: And so instead like thinking about (01:14:46):
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Jonny: it as being stuff that is designed so you get (01:14:49):
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Jonny: out of the way like the most successful technology that (01:14:51):
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Jonny: would enable like semantic web stuff is that no longer requires (01:14:55):
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Jonny: the developer to be there and allows people to actually have autonomy on computers (01:14:58):
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Jonny: but again there's no percentage in that it's in fact anti-profitable and so (01:15:02):
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Jonny: like that's it's a very difficult thing to organize that kind of not only a (01:15:08):
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Jonny: technical vision, but social vision as well. (01:15:13):
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Jonny: Yeah. I always end up just like back in wiki world. (01:15:17):
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Jonny: It's just like some of the most, some of the most lovely parts of the web, as far as I'm concerned. (01:15:20):
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Jonny: I'm still curious if I can find this, this like link data music project. (01:15:26):
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Jonny: Cause that also is something I'm interested in. (01:15:31):
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Jonny: Oh, so like, I don't know. I feel like the thing I think about is like survivable web technology. (01:15:32):
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Jonny: Always just like return to like pirate networks being sort of like the things (01:15:40):
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Jonny: that can exist and do survive on the web we're just like what are the longest (01:15:44):
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Jonny: lived things on the internet and it's like the w3c website just sort of they (01:15:49):
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Jonny: win by the hell but like but like, (01:15:55):
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Jonny: other than that like pirate networks like that is the other major answer that just like some of (01:16:00):
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Jonny: those like mp3s that were (01:16:05):
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Jonny: like released on kazaar or something like that are still floating (01:16:08):
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Jonny: around and that just like you (01:16:11):
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Jonny: compare that to the extreme adversarial (01:16:14):
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Jonny: conditions by which the entire global intellectual property regime is bearing (01:16:18):
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Jonny: down you and still it happens like why does that work and like you know to some (01:16:21):
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Jonny: degree it's a technological question but it's also a social question of just (01:16:26):
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Jonny: being like because people take it as their responsibility that it's like i see (01:16:29):
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Jonny: see myself as an active participant in this system. (01:16:34):
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Jonny: And so when my pirate site gets shut down, I go to the next one and put everything back up. (01:16:37):
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Jonny: So, yeah, that's anyway, you've got to love the pirates, although there's a (01:16:43):
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Jonny: huge amount of power and political problems in those circles as well. (01:16:48):
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Jay: Librarians need to read that, like how to form an affinity group zine and like (01:16:51):
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Jay: go from there, see what happens. (01:16:55):
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Justin: I mean, I was. (01:17:00):
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Dorothea: It's likely to work as anything, really. (01:17:01):
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Justin: Yeah. I think one of the practical reasons also linked up in data is always (01:17:04):
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Justin: difficult is that kind of all files are local files in the same way that like (01:17:08):
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Justin: all history is local history because it's always local to somewhere. (01:17:14):
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Justin: Anytime I try and think of, you know, particularly like when you mentioned EADs, (01:17:19):
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Justin: there used to be a lot of stuff in the EAD literature about like, (01:17:23):
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Justin: why does no one share their local authority files? (01:17:26):
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Justin: Like, you know, like John Fox Smith donated to the library and we have his name (01:17:30):
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Justin: authority file in like our decks, but he doesn't have like a library of Congress (01:17:37):
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Justin: name authority because he wasn't famous enough. (01:17:42):
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Justin: Right. So everyone's got there. Right. Right. He just had a bunch of money. (01:17:45):
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Justin: Right. And so, so, so we have all of these people who are local in our local (01:17:49):
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Justin: name authority files and they never, ever get shared and they always stay siloed. (01:17:55):
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Justin: And yes there is almost no (01:17:59):
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Justin: solution to it because the amount (01:18:03):
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Justin: of labor it would take to like disambiguate the (01:18:06):
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Justin: names people who have common names and you (01:18:10):
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Justin: know is this the same person and then who's going to do (01:18:12):
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Justin: it too because like they barely have enough staff (01:18:15):
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Justin: and special collections anyway so who cares if like every local (01:18:18):
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Justin: donor is going to get their own name authority file while and like I think another (01:18:21):
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Justin: thing is like like Johnny mentioned having like the way Johnny uses a word would (01:18:25):
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Justin: have to go to a URI it's kind of when we were talking about taxonomy last week (01:18:30):
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Justin: and that episode doesn't come out yet but I, (01:18:36):
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Justin: Sort of like the issues with like taxonomy for animals and everything. (01:18:40):
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Justin: You need like smaller sets of words, not bigger ones in order to actually make it useful for humans. (01:18:44):
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Justin: So when I was working with the bird working group, it was like everyone keeps (01:18:51):
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Justin: using too many different words. (01:18:55):
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Justin: We need to just all we need to solve this problem is like a short list. (01:18:57):
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Justin: And then we can use that as like user submitted metadata and tags. (01:19:01):
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Justin: And that's really all we need is just to agree between us humans, (01:19:06):
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Justin: we're going to use the word paleo-ornithology instead of archaeo-ornithology. (01:19:11):
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Justin: And, like, that's all we had to do is, like, kind of get people to agree to that. (01:19:18):
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Justin: There's not really, like, a technical solution because, you know, (01:19:22):
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Justin: the entire birdworking group of paleo-ornithologists is, like, (01:19:24):
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Justin: if they were all on a boat and it sank, there wouldn't be a birdworking group. (01:19:28):
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Justin: Right. So it's, it's not too difficult to like, it's, it's not an impossible (01:19:33):
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Justin: like political solution. (01:19:37):
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Justin: And it's what I always keep kind of thinking about is like, we have all these documents. (01:19:40):
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Justin: Yeah. And there it's, it would be nice to break things up into data and share it as linked data. (01:19:45):
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Justin: But as an organization, you don't really need to depending on the size and scale. (01:19:50):
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Justin: And so that's why like so many libraries have their own. (01:19:57):
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Justin: When I think of like how a library is organized, it is ultimately you know the (01:20:00):
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Justin: reason why mark is like that is its access points and it's kind of what we always (01:20:06):
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Justin: default back to is what's the access point for this and i don't really care. (01:20:11):
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Justin: Semantically like how the data works as long as like this is a subject area (01:20:16):
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Justin: this is the title this is the author how do i get to the information like the (01:20:20):
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Justin: quickest possible steps and then that And that leads to, (01:20:25):
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Justin: I feel like that's where always the disconnect has been for me with linked open data of like, (01:20:28):
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Justin: when is this going to help my users in my library? (01:20:35):
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Justin: It's like, well, you can get stuff out into the, and it's easy for me as a Skullcom (01:20:39):
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Justin: person, because it's like, I'm the only person who's like, no, (01:20:43):
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Justin: I want this out everywhere in the world. (01:20:46):
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Justin: I want everyone to look at this. But everything else in the library is categorically (01:20:48):
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Justin: organized around how do people in here find the stuff that we're looking for? (01:20:53):
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Justin: And I'm the only one who has to flip that and try and say, how do we get what's (01:20:58):
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Justin: in here out to the world with no barriers and restrictions and logins? (01:21:02):
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Jay: Yeah like was it last year maybe a couple years ago i was part of the like pcc ad hoc, (01:21:07):
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Jay: group that put out the final decision about like hey maybe don't put gender in name authority files, (01:21:17):
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Jay: because there was the initial one and then a lot of people got mad at that one (01:21:25):
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Jay: and then i was part of the ad hoc hey let's revisit this thank you for your (01:21:28):
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Jay: service and one of the final sticking points. (01:21:32):
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Jay: Like, cause most of us were on board with like, maybe let's just don't like, (01:21:38):
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Jay: it's too complicated to think of any ways to like put consistent language ways to do this ethically. (01:21:43):
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Jay: That's not going to hurt like trans people was mainly who we were thinking of, (01:21:51):
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Jay: but like, there's other reasons why you might put gender. (01:21:55):
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Jay: I'm like, some of the reasons were like, but with like Asian names, (01:21:58):
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Jay: sometimes it's hard to disambiguate. And I'm like, that's racist. (01:22:01):
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Jay: Like, that's just lazy and racist. exist but the (01:22:05):
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Jay: big one like the final kind of sticking point where we were (01:22:08):
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Jay: like maybe there's a point here but ultimately no we (01:22:11):
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Jay: don't care was well in a (01:22:14):
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Jay: linked data environment people could query (01:22:16):
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Jay: books about xyz written (01:22:19):
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Jay: by trans authors or for (01:22:23):
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Jay: example like you can do a sparkle with wiki data where (01:22:26):
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Jay: you can be like pull all of the towns that currently have (01:22:29):
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Jay: female mayors or whatever is usually the example that (01:22:32):
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Jay: they use when they tell you what sparkle can do with wiki data (01:22:36):
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Jay: like what if you could do that with a library (01:22:39):
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Jay: catalog whoa and we had (01:22:42):
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Jay: to be like yeah but no not discovery (01:22:45):
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Jay: layers like primo doesn't even (01:22:48):
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Jay: do that yet like no discovery layer right now (01:22:52):
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Jay: that's like popularly used by academic or (01:22:55):
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Jay: public libraries has that capability they might (01:22:57):
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Jay: have linked data in the records and they might have apis exposed if you have (01:23:01):
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Jay: a developer who can do neat shit but ultimately that's not how those searches (01:23:06):
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Jay: work right now so maybe it is available in the future but for right now we don't (01:23:11):
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Jay: care and that's not the purpose of name authority files so right, (01:23:17):
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Jay: yeah like. (01:23:22):
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Jonny: The the question of just like what is it for like what is the point of it you (01:23:22):
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Jonny: know why Why would I do it if there's no use is like also ultimately really (01:23:28):
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Jonny: just like, like beliefs about like how things are supposed to be designed. (01:23:32):
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Jonny: We're just like, is the goal of it to be able to get a exhaustive and true answer (01:23:35):
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Jonny: of all of the, you know, cities that have a woman as a bear, (01:23:42):
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Jonny: you know, is that, that the point of what we should be doing with semantic web (01:23:46):
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Jonny: is to like make the correct information exist in a unified vocabulary. (01:23:50):
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Jonny: And like, I don't, I like, spoiler alert I don't think so that just like well (01:23:55):
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Jonny: because there's no such thing as like the authoritative and complete true archive (01:24:01):
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Jonny: of all knowledge but it's also just like. (01:24:05):
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Jonny: Thinking about is like well that's like an impressive technical (01:24:08):
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Jonny: feat that i could put on like some sort of like tech (01:24:12):
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Jonny: specs document that just like my query engine (01:24:15):
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Jonny: can produce 10 billion triples in like one one (01:24:18):
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Jonny: second but like yeah like what's (01:24:21):
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Jonny: the point of that and just like thinking about it like in the context of language (01:24:24):
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Jonny: we're just like it's also related to the notion of like (01:24:27):
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Jonny: ontology curation about just like how do we come to (01:24:30):
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Jonny: like know the terms that are the one term to (01:24:32):
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Jonny: use is like that's only an important question if the (01:24:35):
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Jonny: goal of it is to like make everything be totally uniform (01:24:38):
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Jonny: and also that that act (01:24:41):
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Jonny: of searching is like relatively precious and hard (01:24:45):
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Jonny: to do and like i can only do one (01:24:48):
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Jonny: of these or something like that that just like this is not an iterative process (01:24:51):
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Jonny: of exploration and ultimate and (01:24:54):
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Jonny: also that just like you're not able to so like the thing about just like the way (01:24:57):
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Jonny: that this works with language we're just like it doesn't ever work with language like (01:25:00):
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Jonny: say new phenomenon exists in the (01:25:03):
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Jonny: world like we need to get the council of languages (01:25:06):
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Jonny: together to agree on the one word for (01:25:10):
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Jonny: that and then everyone from then on has to agree to only use that word to refer (01:25:13):
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Jonny: to that phenomenon it's like that never how it has happened and it never will (01:25:18):
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Jonny: be and just like instead just like this sort of local interpretation of what's (01:25:22):
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Jonny: happening in my immediate reality and just like you try and use this word and (01:25:26):
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Jonny: is this effective with it when when I say it in this way. (01:25:29):
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Jonny: Oh, what I'm talking about is this. (01:25:32):
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Jonny: And Oh, I know it as this. And just like this sort of negotiation over what (01:25:35):
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Jonny: things mean and in what context and to who, and like being able to have your (01:25:38):
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Jonny: personal vocabulary and ontology where just like, as your history of your browsing. (01:25:43):
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Jonny: It's like, I've come to know that these terms are the same terms or just like (01:25:48):
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Jonny: when I am in this neighborhood of semantic space, (01:25:52):
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Jonny: I use this word instead of this word. And like. (01:25:55):
undefined

Jonny: Then you can imagine like the collective power of something like that. (01:25:59):
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Jonny: We're just like, okay, all of my friends know these words as being the same. (01:26:02):
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Jonny: And so just like in general, I can ask around and say who I'm looking for this. (01:26:07):
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Jonny: Does anyone know how I would refer to that? And just like being able to, (01:26:12):
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Jonny: you know, make sense of just like as like as like an iterative and a social (01:26:16):
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Jonny: and an interactive process. (01:26:19):
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Jonny: Not one that's done once as if it were like a database query with a very controlled (01:26:21):
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Jonny: database schema that's like known in advance. (01:26:27):
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Jonny: Ants and so like it just it changes our (01:26:30):
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Jonny: expectations for what technology should look like that just (01:26:32):
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Jonny: like i don't go to the vast impersonal search (01:26:36):
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Jonny: engine that indexes the whole web but instead (01:26:39):
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Jonny: i have to actively cultivate sort of like (01:26:42):
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Jonny: a set of nodes and and friends and like relationships and (01:26:45):
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Jonny: like prior acquaintances with this kind of thing and (01:26:48):
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Jonny: then expect it to take a little bit of (01:26:52):
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Jonny: time to find stuff you know (01:26:54):
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Jonny: that just like that and like i that sounds (01:26:57):
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Jonny: sort of counterintuitive we're just like i'm not saying it in create exclusion (01:27:00):
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Jonny: or create inefficiency but like (01:27:04):
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Jonny: that just like the goal of the system isn't to produce (01:27:08):
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Jonny: maximally true maximally numerous and maximally (01:27:11):
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Jonny: cleanly organized data all the time and like (01:27:15):
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Jonny: it's just like it it's i can imagine like thinking about just like what happens (01:27:18):
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Jonny: you know just like like just talking about just like why doesn't everybody share (01:27:24):
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Jonny: their their like local i actually i'm not familiar with this term like authority (01:27:28):
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Jonny: file i assume that's like you know like a local like reference like subject. (01:27:33):
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Jay: Headings or like if you publish a book like your name how that's in the library (01:27:37):
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Jay: of congress it's an authority file. (01:27:41):
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Jonny: Gotcha yeah they're just like they're it's also just like one of the things (01:27:43):
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Jonny: who gets to do that you know that like the same problem with just like, (01:27:46):
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Jonny: you know, libraries and museums being the sites of just like pillaged cultural artifacts. (01:27:51):
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Jonny: It's just sort of like not your job and not your role to be the purveyor of (01:27:57):
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Jonny: this information like it's about this person. (01:28:03):
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Jonny: And it becomes your role because like they have no means of doing so themselves. (01:28:05):
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Jonny: Like there's just like these systems aren't ones that can be touched by the (01:28:10):
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Jonny: average person. Like I can't like deposit a book myself in Library of Congress. (01:28:13):
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Jonny: I need some intermediary force and so like (01:28:18):
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Jonny: that's just like that like there's another part just like (01:28:21):
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Jonny: why doesn't it happen and why doesn't it work is because like on the (01:28:24):
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Jonny: other end just like who is it for and should we even do (01:28:26):
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Jonny: that at all because like same thing of just like what happens when (01:28:29):
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Jonny: you need to change your dead name in in the (01:28:32):
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Jonny: all the bibliometric records like how does (01:28:35):
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Jonny: that happen yeah i (01:28:39):
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Jonny: freak all my software friends out when i talk about eventually (01:28:42):
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Jonny: needing to write the anti-performance performance manifesto that (01:28:45):
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Jonny: just like sort of like that just like like (01:28:49):
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Jonny: and someone who is like a friend on (01:28:52):
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Jonny: the fediverse and it's like we talk all the time just sort of like horrified just (01:28:55):
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Jonny: like what do you mean software should be delightful to run and like just (01:28:59):
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Jonny: like yeah yeah that's not exactly what i'm referring (01:29:02):
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Jonny: to though just being sort of like that like the we need to get page load time (01:29:05):
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Jonny: down to two milliseconds or life will be lost and meaningless as we know it (01:29:10):
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Jonny: as just like a set of ideological commitments rather than making stuff be usable (01:29:15):
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Jonny: by people is the thing I'm talking about. (01:29:20):
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Jonny: Oh my god i'm opening this i'm opening this you have an authority file you have an official uri i. (01:29:25):
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Jay: Do i have a uri and i'm part of the problem. (01:29:33):
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Jonny: We all have many uris yeah i helped. (01:29:39):
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Jay: I helped write a book in like 2018 in my during my first job hell. (01:29:43):
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Jonny: Yeah so like one of (01:29:49):
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Jonny: the interesting things that i think that blue sky and (01:29:52):
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Jonny: ad protocol has done is like make it so that (01:29:55):
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Jonny: like domains are sort of meaningful as identity we're just like yeah that's (01:29:58):
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Jonny: cool yeah that just like i have a domain and like control over a domain and (01:30:02):
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Jonny: that gives me a source of identity even if it doesn't give me control over the (01:30:07):
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Jonny: computers that host the thing that you know whatever like we talk about that (01:30:11):
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Jonny: different time but just being like it's very (01:30:15):
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Jonny: interesting that just like that has resurged and actually genuinely useful. (01:30:16):
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Jonny: And I think one of the best ideas to come out of it is like actually using those, (01:30:21):
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Jonny: like I, you know, URIs and URLs has just literally, this can be my name. (01:30:25):
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Dorothea: Yeah. Because it's language independent, human language independent and things (01:30:31):
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Dorothea: like debt naming, which we have to deal with in the authority file environment (01:30:37):
undefined

Dorothea: because it is predicated on names. (01:30:42):
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Dorothea: It's just a URI you don't have to do that you can attach any name you want to it so there's. (01:30:44):
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Jay: Definitely that's the good thing about URIs is it allows the flexibility for (01:30:51):
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Jay: trans names or any other kind of name that might change absolutely that's the (01:30:55):
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Jay: good part about them love URIs. (01:30:59):
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Dorothea: That's one thing that I want to keep at all this nonsense URIs as identifiers (01:31:02):
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Dorothea: was genuinely a clever and useful idea. (01:31:09):
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Jay: Yeah, it was a big deal when the homosaurus moved from having the terms be the (01:31:13):
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Jay: URIs to having alphanumeric URIs so that we could change terms as language use changed. (01:31:18):
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Dorothea: Yeah, love it. (01:31:25):
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Justin: Did they ever tell you don't put semantic information into URI? (01:31:27):
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Justin: Everyone does it. It's so stupid. (01:31:32):
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Jay: We're queer. We don't listen. Fuck you. (01:31:35):
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Jay: Um doi.org doi.org. (01:31:41):
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Justin: Slash my journal volume one and. (01:31:46):
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Dorothea: It's like yeah if you ever if you (01:31:50):
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Dorothea: ever meet jeff builder who's a wonder he works at crossref wonderful human being (01:31:52):
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Dorothea: he has many many many rants about publishers coming to crossref wanting to change (01:31:57):
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Dorothea: a doi prefix because they merged with another publisher or internal change publishers (01:32:03):
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Dorothea: or whatever the hell and he's like no that's not the point. (01:32:07):
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Justin: They um they have a a suffix generator now it's just it's literally just a spreadsheet (01:32:12):
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Justin: that generates a suffix but they're like use this idiots yes. (01:32:17):
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Jay: Please is that like half your job justin is just being like. (01:32:22):
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Justin: No i don't meant i mean i don't meant dois manually usually but But the thing (01:32:26):
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Justin: that always bugged me was OJS used to put semantic information into the automated (01:32:31):
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Justin: strings that it would create. (01:32:37):
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Justin: So it would create, it would say like V and then the volume number and then (01:32:39):
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Justin: N and then the article number. (01:32:45):
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Justin: And I was like, don't do that. Just put random numbers. Just put random numbers. (01:32:47):
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Justin: Just general, just random number generator. That's all you need to do. (01:32:51):
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Justin: But they didn't do it until the latest update. So now they do it properly. (01:32:55):
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Dorothea: Where you can do what every single baby relational database administrator knows to do, and just count. (01:33:01):
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Jay: I don't know how to count. I'm gay, as we've learned from the homosaurus. (01:33:10):
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Justin: I do have an Excel sheet of... (01:33:14):
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Justin: Manuscripts and database bases and it's just zero zero zero zero zero what is this yeah. (01:33:17):
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Jay: What happens when you go beyond the capacity for how many zeros you picked with them. (01:33:26):
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Justin: Doesn't matter. (01:33:32):
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Jonny: Okay and like it's like it's like all of these things like have their times (01:33:33):
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Jonny: and applications and usages and everything like that we're just like just do all of them and make them (01:33:40):
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Jonny: all point to you know the same thing different things etc (01:33:44):
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Jonny: that just like like because i think like you know (01:33:47):
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Jonny: sequential numbering identify works you (01:33:50):
undefined

Jonny: know there are times when you don't want to use (01:33:54):
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Jonny: it like we're just like you have like potentially personally identifying (01:33:57):
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Jonny: information where you don't want someone to be able to enumerate over all possible (01:34:00):
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Jonny: things and find all the stuff on the server and spoiler alert is like university (01:34:04):
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Jonny: it terrible job at this and And frequently we'll just have like very sensitive (01:34:10):
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Jonny: documents hanging out that can be publicly enumerated on their public web. (01:34:14):
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Jonny: But like, you know, so it's like super useful when designing some systems in (01:34:19):
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Jonny: the same way that just like having totally anonymous strings is super useful in like PID space. (01:34:24):
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Jonny: But then want to have semantic URIs and some other content that just like do all of these things. (01:34:29):
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Jonny: And like the other one is like the content hashing where just like the identifier (01:34:35):
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Jonny: is like intrinsically based on the content of the thing. So if I have the thing, (01:34:39):
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Jonny: I know how it would be called everywhere in the world, like has its own benefits and trade offs. (01:34:43):
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Jonny: That's like, that is one of those dangerous ideological territories where just (01:34:48):
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Jonny: like you get pirates and also cryptocurrency zealots in the same room. (01:34:53):
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Jonny: And it's just sort of like, like, it becomes this maelstrom of just like, (01:34:58):
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Jonny: the same idea, meaning completely different things to different people. (01:35:03):
undefined

Jonny: But like, yeah, yeah, we're not going to solve the identification problem, (01:35:09):
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Jonny: but basically just like, you know, it's the rigidity and being only able to (01:35:13):
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Jonny: use one thing that like is the problem to me. (01:35:17):
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Justin: Yeah. Now, I don't have Library of Congress name authority file, though. (01:35:21):
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Justin: Someone from Florida with my name born same year as me does, which is confusing. (01:35:25):
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Justin: There's so many people with my I went to high school with someone with my name. (01:35:32):
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Justin: It's very confusing. It doesn't seem like it should be that common. (01:35:36):
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Jonny: It makes you harder to dox, though, so that's like passive self-defense. (01:35:39):
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Justin: It is really good. I have successfully scrubbed my information off the web several times. (01:35:43):
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Justin: It's not hard. Or one time I couldn't do it, so I just redirected it to another dude with my name. (01:35:49):
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Justin: And so I just changed my information to, I changed my address to his. (01:35:55):
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Jonny: And I feel like this would be something that just like, (01:35:59):
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Jonny: like Dorothy would probably have stronger thoughts about, (01:36:03):
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Jonny: it's like the notion of privacy and like when (01:36:06):
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Jonny: it comes to like linked open data and stuff like that we're just like this the (01:36:09):
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Jonny: fact that just like we don't want all the world's information to be publicly (01:36:13):
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Jonny: we don't want like the justin authority record that includes your you know social (01:36:17):
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Jonny: security number and you know phone number and everything like that like like (01:36:22):
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Jonny: like limits to openness you know that just like needs to be some amount of like (01:36:25):
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Jonny: fungibility and yeah i'll. (01:36:29):
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Dorothea: Actually give you a real world example if you (01:36:32):
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Dorothea: go and look at my wiki data page and you (01:36:35):
undefined

Dorothea: can just go to wikidata.org and look up dorothea salo i'm (01:36:38):
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Dorothea: the only one as far as i know that has ever existed so what you find will be (01:36:41):
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Dorothea: me i might uh although i identify like i'm c's female that is how i identify (01:36:45):
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Dorothea: that's who i am my wiki data page actually says no gender no gender recorded (01:36:51):
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Dorothea: and the reason for that is that Wikipedia, (01:36:56):
undefined

Dorothea: with which I have a very vexed relationship, (01:37:00):
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Dorothea: runs through wikidata every now and again (01:37:04):
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Dorothea: to do things like make lists of people (01:37:07):
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Dorothea: who maybe should have wikipedia entries but don't (01:37:10):
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Dorothea: and of course they do this for minoritized and (01:37:14):
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Dorothea: underrepresented populations and of course wikipedia (01:37:17):
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Dorothea: is well known for having a huge gender problem (01:37:20):
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Dorothea: gender disparity coverage problem so i get sucked up into those lists and nobody (01:37:24):
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Dorothea: asked me i do not actually want onto wikipedia page thank you very much and (01:37:31):
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Dorothea: i would rather not be so i changed my gender that is listed on wikidana. (01:37:37):
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Justin: I did not actually change. (01:37:42):
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Dorothea: My gender that's. (01:37:42):
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Jonny: Dope like anti-bot action like you just like. (01:37:44):
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Dorothea: Yeah a digital seem to be the only option for saying no don't make me a wikipedia entry transfer. (01:37:48):
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Sadie: The privacy of it. (01:37:57):
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Dorothea: Pretty. (01:37:59):
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Justin: Much gender opsec. (01:38:00):
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Jay: My gender is. (01:38:03):
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Justin: Fuck off, (01:38:04):
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Justin: get this gender working for me, (01:38:06):
undefined

Justin: yeah no that's why I also like orchid IDs too because it's a very nice system (01:38:11):
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Justin: that you get to control and you get to you get to write your name how you want (01:38:16):
undefined

Justin: it you can write it in multiple scripts, (01:38:21):
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Justin: and it's just an orchid and it just will point to whatever you tell it so you (01:38:23):
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Justin: can change it whenever you want and that's what I really like about (01:38:28):
undefined

Justin: it is you know that that would (01:38:31):
undefined

Justin: be something that would be very nice to use (01:38:34):
undefined

Justin: for like local archiving and stuff like that (01:38:37):
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Justin: but the reason why is like no one's going to bother to do that nerds will (01:38:40):
undefined

Justin: do that but like i couldn't even get like faculty to do it even when this would (01:38:43):
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Justin: save them time in the long run or it would make right or it would solve headaches (01:38:46):
undefined

Justin: like if they don't if they have a double barrel first name and people keep putting (01:38:50):
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Justin: their second first name as their their last name it would solve them this problem (01:38:54):
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Justin: but they you know they don't go sign up for an orchid i. (01:38:58):
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Jay: Was actually when i was cited in the ethics in name authority files book one (01:39:02):
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Jay: of the chapters and then they asked like how i wanted to be cited i was like i would like my orchid, (01:39:08):
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Jay: because they were citing one of my articles or my thesis or something they had (01:39:13):
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Jay: my dead name on it and i was like i want you to do it this way and i want you (01:39:17):
undefined

Jay: to have my orchid in there so that it's collocated like properly links back (01:39:20):
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Jay: to like all of my stuff right and i think it was brie actually then went on (01:39:25):
undefined

Jay: to write an article and talk about, (01:39:30):
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Jay: like how i ask to be cited (01:39:33):
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Jay: in that book as like (01:39:36):
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Jay: using orchids and uris and linked data as (01:39:39):
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Jay: a way to help trans people who maybe have (01:39:42):
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Jay: published under dead names um and if (01:39:44):
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Jay: they don't want to go back and change like ask (01:39:48):
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Jay: for it to be changed which i don't but this way i can have people cite me and (01:39:51):
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Jay: just use my like first initial and it point back to my current stuff and everything (01:39:56):
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Jay: i've done with my current name while also still being like but i'm also the (01:40:01):
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Jay: person that wrote that yeah it's not that hard. (01:40:05):
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Justin: Yeah especially if you like use initials because (01:40:08):
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Justin: i use my initial a lot because i do have a very common name so i think (01:40:11):
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Justin: but i used to write my full middle name and i don't do that (01:40:15):
undefined

Justin: anymore so it's nice to be able to be like okay i (01:40:17):
undefined

Justin: published my thesis with my full name but now i only (01:40:20):
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Justin: like using my middle initial yeah and now i'm (01:40:23):
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Justin: at an institution where i'm the only one of me so i don't even have a number (01:40:27):
undefined

Justin: after my name i was very excited when i got my email signed to me because there (01:40:30):
undefined

Justin: is now someone else at my university with my name so there is like a zero one (01:40:34):
undefined

Justin: now and i'm like ah finally got there first i used to get detention because (01:40:38):
undefined

Justin: of some dude had my name are. (01:40:43):
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Jonny: You serious i. (01:40:44):
undefined

Justin: Get his detention yeah they used to put out a roll with the names at the beginning (01:40:46):
undefined

Justin: of the period teachers had to check them and if you were on the list you had (01:40:50):
undefined

Justin: to go to the cafeteria so i kept getting called into the cafeteria because Because (01:40:53):
undefined

Justin: it wouldn't disambiguate my name. (01:40:58):
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Sadie: I had that happen to me too. I had my birth last name, which is, (01:41:00):
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Sadie: I changed my last name when I got married. (01:41:05):
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Sadie: My birth last name is Johnson. (01:41:07):
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Sadie: So there's like, not only are there 70 billion S Johnsons out there, (01:41:11):
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Sadie: but I have a cousin who has almost the same exact name as, we were born almost (01:41:17):
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Sadie: the same exact person practically, right? (01:41:23):
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Sadie: We have the same name, the same first name, same last name. (01:41:25):
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Sadie: Neither of us use our middle name, right? Yeah. So- (01:41:28):
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Sadie: I got told I was supposed to go to detention a couple of times in high school (01:41:31):
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Sadie: because there was another person with my name. It's common. (01:41:36):
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Jonny: But like that's a, you know, like free bad kid social currency, (01:41:39):
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Jonny: you know, just like, hell yeah, I'm going to detention, baby. (01:41:43):
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Jonny: Like that's like, you don't even have to do it. So you get the best of both worlds. (01:41:46):
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Justin: Well, I used that. What they said to me was, well, if they don't put your middle initial, it's not you. (01:41:52):
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Justin: And I use that excuse for the next four years, even though that dude was a senior when I was a freshman. (01:41:56):
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Jonny: Said no middle initial. (01:42:01):
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Justin: It's not me. (01:42:03):
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Jonny: It's like can't. (01:42:03):
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Sadie: Make me do it. (01:42:05):
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Jonny: That's like just social engineering you know just in the real world you know (01:42:06):
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Jonny: just people just intuitively do it there. (01:42:10):
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Sadie: Is no difference between social engineering and con artistry. (01:42:13):
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Jonny: Hell yeah yeah. (01:42:18):
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Sadie: I will die i will die on that hill. (01:42:19):
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Jonny: Yeah a good friend (01:42:22):
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Jonny: of mine is having a crisis of like direction (01:42:25):
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Jonny: in life and i'm like okay so (01:42:28):
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Jonny: your strengths you are super good at like (01:42:31):
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Jonny: infiltrating unfriendly organizations and (01:42:34):
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Jonny: groups of people and like taking on roles and shit (01:42:37):
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Jonny: and did you know that that is a job and like (01:42:40):
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Jonny: um and so like trying to like yeah turn this person totally a job like it's (01:42:43):
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Jonny: like and a lot of the people that do it sort of accidentally find themselves (01:42:48):
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Jonny: you know like like you know seeing it the first time like holy shit you can (01:42:52):
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Jonny: do that and then just like suddenly becoming really good at it anyway i. (01:42:56):
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Sadie: Feel like the the alternate of that fork is improv comedian. (01:43:01):
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Jonny: Their their. (01:43:10):
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Jay: True their true destiny is they just become podcasters improv people are good (01:43:11):
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Jay: at doing podcasts like all my favorite podcasts i've learned like the people (01:43:16):
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Jay: did improv i have no idea what. (01:43:20):
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Sadie: I'm doing here. (01:43:22):
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Jay: Yeah. (01:43:23):
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Jonny: That's like something we did improv that one episode what you did like improv (01:43:24):
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Jonny: games or like what what are you talking about we. (01:43:30):
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Justin: Had we'd seriously wrong on we did skits and those. (01:43:33):
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Jonny: Were oh yeah i i. (01:43:36):
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Justin: Dipped i was bad at it we. (01:43:39):
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Jonny: Were very. (01:43:43):
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Justin: Bad at it but they very good at editing. (01:43:43):
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Jay: They're so good at editing my god when i finally listened to the episode i I (01:43:45):
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Jay: was like, oh, wow, they made something out of this. Yes. (01:43:50):
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Justin: But, yeah, the only thing that we didn't mention that I wanted to maybe mention (01:43:54):
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Justin: is kind of what we talked about last time was whoever controls the nodes of (01:44:01):
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Justin: a graph can control the graph. (01:44:08):
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Justin: And so I was also thinking about that as a security problem with linked open (01:44:10):
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Justin: data is, you know, when we were talking about like all of the privatization (01:44:16):
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Justin: happening, if someone buys a certain node of the graph, (01:44:20):
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Justin: then the same problem Sadie was saying with everyone having their own API is (01:44:25):
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Justin: like, if you're controlling this graph, (01:44:29):
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Justin: even though it's open, and you control like the right permissions, (01:44:31):
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Justin: then like, I don't know, assume that's a problem that's going on. (01:44:34):
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Justin: Because oclc has meridian now and i assume that that it only exists because it will make money if. (01:44:40):
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Jonny: You control. (01:44:47):
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Jay: The spice you control the universe. (01:44:47):
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Jonny: Yeah is that a animal this is a. (01:44:48):
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Justin: Very cranky. (01:44:53):
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Jonny: And just like desirous animal it's like my turn like i'm sure i haven't heard (01:44:55):
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Jonny: about this this meridian thing was the first time i heard about this today is (01:45:01):
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Jonny: this just like a it says may 2024 is it like i assume it's is it that new i. (01:45:05):
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Dorothea: Hadn't known about it until today either for when it's worth oh. (01:45:11):
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Jay: Clc just loves to do shit. (01:45:14):
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Justin: Our our metadata librarian is is currently work like on on a at my job is on (01:45:16):
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Justin: like a committee for i think what is what is the organization the program for (01:45:22):
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Justin: cooperative cataloging and they're They're working on a task group for like (01:45:28):
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Justin: URIs in Mark implementation. (01:45:32):
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Justin: So I guess like they're going to have separate types of like handle based permalinks or something. (01:45:34):
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Justin: I don't know that are going to be in Mark, but they were also talking about (01:45:41):
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Justin: how they had like a demonstration of Meridian. (01:45:45):
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Justin: And I don't, I think it's just the link data they've made out of WorldCat. (01:45:48):
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Jonny: So they're, they're, they're using an entry for Octavia Butler as the demo data. (01:45:55):
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Jonny: And I'm like, that's like an interesting, interesting, like person and body (01:46:02):
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Jonny: of work to evoke in your like corporate platform. (01:46:08):
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Jonny: Like that's just like, yeah. (01:46:11):
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Justin: The don't build this machine. (01:46:14):
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Jonny: Yeah. (01:46:16):
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Sadie: The Torment Nexus. (01:46:17):
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Dorothea: Thank you. Don't create the Torment Nexus. (01:46:19):
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Sadie: Wouldn't it be terrible if we created the Torment Nexus? Creates the Torment Nexus anyways. (01:46:24):
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Dorothea: So here's a gif. And this is totally off the cuff just because, (01:46:30):
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Dorothea: again, I only heard about this today. (01:46:35):
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Dorothea: I think it is clear to OCLC that their WorldCat monopoly is not long for this (01:46:36):
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Dorothea: world. one way or another. (01:46:43):
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Dorothea: Whether it's a customer revolt or we finally find a way to do this with linked (01:46:45):
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Dorothea: data without getting sued out of existence, that's not going to last. (01:46:51):
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Dorothea: So how can OCLC come up with a linked data store that they can fence around, (01:46:56):
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Dorothea: limit to their customers the same way that they've done with WorldCat? (01:47:05):
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Dorothea: That's what I think Meridian is. (01:47:09):
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Justin: Probably. (01:47:11):
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Jonny: Probably i mean as as you're saying like (01:47:12):
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Jonny: they're doing it because it makes money (01:47:15):
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Jonny: somehow and like i think that's a pretty good bet i mean and it's like continuous (01:47:18):
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Jonny: with the way that the rest of like linked open data has has worked we're just (01:47:23):
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Jonny: like that's like what wiki data is to to some degree is that it's like basically (01:47:27):
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Jonny: a captive labor pool like and so it's like like who funds wiki data is largely Google. (01:47:31):
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Jonny: And so like Google bought Freebase, like the predecessor to it, (01:47:38):
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Jonny: you know, they did their attempts at cleaning it up and everything like that. (01:47:44):
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Jonny: And then basically like shunted that into Wikidata and they profit from it immensely (01:47:48):
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Jonny: by being clean, corporate friendly. (01:47:55):
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Jonny: Like there's no like swearing on Wikidata, you know, and, and. (01:47:58):
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Jonny: Way of concentrating a bunch of labor so that (01:48:04):
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Jonny: then they can mine it and make derivative profits from it and (01:48:07):
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Jonny: like we're just like the people that work on wiki data are like (01:48:11):
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Jonny: genuinely true believers in like the (01:48:14):
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Jonny: beneficence of cataloging the (01:48:18):
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Jonny: world's data they're just like they're like not corporate stooges (01:48:21):
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Jonny: they're like view themselves as being like we're just (01:48:24):
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Jonny: trying to do the same mission as wikipedia (01:48:28):
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Jonny: which is just like yeah make make a global information store but (01:48:31):
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Jonny: not really evaluating the like why would google want (01:48:34):
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Jonny: us to do this you know and like and so (01:48:37):
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Jonny: just like that that sort of pure production (01:48:40):
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Jonny: as captive labor model is one (01:48:43):
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Jonny: of those biggest sort of like you know red pilling moments (01:48:46):
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Jonny: for like information people is (01:48:50):
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Jonny: that just like what if it's actually bad to have like (01:48:53):
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Jonny: these sort of like crowdsourced information platforms that (01:48:57):
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Jonny: just like so when we were watching when we (01:49:01):
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Jonny: were watching lo and behold like one of the (01:49:04):
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Jonny: like examples of just like the beauty of the internet and so (01:49:07):
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Jonny: it's like again like every time i think about this is like this is a (01:49:10):
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Jonny: movie that was released in 2016 which is not that long (01:49:13):
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Jonny: ago but yet and yet it feels like a completely different (01:49:16):
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Jonny: universe we're just like this is like one of. (01:49:19):
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Jonny: The promising things about it where you had this like chemical reaction crowdsourced (01:49:21):
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Jonny: thing where just like the wisdom of the crowds (01:49:26):
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Jonny: lots of people playing this game about like protein (01:49:29):
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Jonny: folding or whatever was able to do something (01:49:32):
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Jonny: that you know the best scientists in the world could do and it's just like cool (01:49:35):
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Jonny: but were any of those people on the paper that got published from that and from (01:49:41):
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Jonny: all of that work and like we're just like If it's just a thing where you farm (01:49:45):
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Jonny: out other people's labor in time. (01:49:50):
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Jonny: Or just in this case, farm out all (01:49:53):
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Jonny: of the cataloging labor that happens in libraries into curating this... (01:49:56):
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Jonny: Collection of information in the same way that i i don't know (01:50:01):
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Jonny: the politics of world cat i assume it's the similar kind of way we're just like (01:50:04):
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Jonny: everyone is required to use this but we don't actually have much control over (01:50:08):
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Jonny: it kind of thing and just like yeah like that is a a massive extraction vector (01:50:13):
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Jonny: sort of hiding in plain sight under the guise of pro-social technologies. (01:50:18):
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Justin: Yeah and this is probably more of the same which (01:50:22):
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Justin: is to make that data then usable and (01:50:25):
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Justin: and useful to ai products i would (01:50:29):
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Justin: assume particularly it's interesting that they (01:50:32):
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Justin: mentioned like incorporating orchid and ror (01:50:34):
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Justin: which are like skullcom specific things really especially ror (01:50:37):
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Justin: is like a weird one to throw in there because that's like research organizations (01:50:42):
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Justin: right to make sure that those are disambiguated because journals are really (01:50:46):
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Justin: really bad at disambiguating like the biology department of this university (01:50:50):
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Justin: because departments change all the time and also people abbreviate them and And, you know, (01:50:54):
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Justin: so there's no, there's no like one identity and that causes all kinds of problems, (01:51:00):
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Justin: even just like getting the university right half the time. It's like, it's wrong. (01:51:04):
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Justin: So ROR is kind of like orchid for organizations. And so that's a very specific thing. (01:51:10):
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Justin: And I find that very strange. Like, do they want like regular, (01:51:15):
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Justin: like cataloging librarians, like fix the Skollcom metadata thing? (01:51:19):
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Justin: Problems that are out there they. (01:51:24):
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Dorothea: Do like oyster yeah. (01:51:26):
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Justin: That like clarivate. (01:51:28):
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Dorothea: Can fix scoop that up back in (01:51:29):
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Dorothea: the day what's that oh it was a (01:51:32):
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Dorothea: union search engine for institutional and sometimes disciplinary repositories (01:51:36):
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Dorothea: is is what it was it's basically there were always problems with But the problems (01:51:42):
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Dorothea: go back to OAIPMH being complete garbage, (01:51:49):
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Dorothea: such that you couldn't, for one of the things it does not allow you to say is, (01:51:54):
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Dorothea: is there a full text associated with this item? (01:51:59):
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Dorothea: And so one of the reasons Oyster became completely useless is that it was choked (01:52:02):
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Dorothea: with metadata-only records, which really disappointed end users because they (01:52:07):
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Dorothea: couldn't click on it and get to the thing. Right. (01:52:12):
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Jonny: And that's definitely why I auto-embed Sci-Hub links in all of my writing, (01:52:15):
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Jonny: because it's just like, what use is it to someone else for me to cite something (01:52:22):
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Jonny: if they can't actually see it? (01:52:26):
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Justin: I wonder how they scrape the full text information now when stuff gets pulled (01:52:28):
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Justin: from OAIPMH, because it still does. (01:52:32):
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Justin: Because OAIPMH is how we push out to core, but it definitely does know if we've got full text. (01:52:34):
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Dorothea: I have to think they implemented a check, which is fascinating because they (01:52:40):
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Dorothea: would have had to implement such a check for pretty much every single repository (01:52:45):
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Dorothea: and repository design in existence. (01:52:52):
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Dorothea: Like, you're literally looking for a link that says PDF or something. (01:52:55):
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Justin: Yeah. (01:52:59):
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Dorothea: Wow. All because Herbert Van de Soppel is complete crap at building protocols (01:53:00):
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Dorothea: and things that will be useful at last. All right. I said the name. (01:53:06):
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Jonny: This is obscure beef. (01:53:10):
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Dorothea: Oh, I, you know, (01:53:13):
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Dorothea: Herbert Vandesop, when I say serial project abandoner, he is the paradigm example. (01:53:17):
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Dorothea: He totally did that with OAPMH. He totally did it with Memento. (01:53:24):
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Dorothea: There are probably six other projects of his that I could also... Right? Memento. (01:53:27):
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Justin: Remember Memento? (01:53:33):
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Dorothea: Yeah. And I'm just like, funders, stop giving this guy money. It never turns out well. (01:53:36):
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Justin: We got more obscure beef than a wagyu farm heck yeah don't look at me like that. (01:53:43):
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Jay: I'll look at you however I want to. (01:53:53):
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Justin: Alright I was very proud of that. (01:53:54):
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Sadie: It's good. (01:53:59):
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Justin: Well done thank you I think we should wrap up. (01:54:01):
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Jonny: Yeah yes I've got sleepy bitch disease. (01:54:06):
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Sadie: Did we clarify what the hell's. (01:54:11):
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Jonny: Going on or still cloudy. (01:54:14):
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Sadie: I i think i've got a pretty good gist actually and you know what knowing the (01:54:15):
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Sadie: beef actually helps it it it does so good that's. (01:54:22):
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Dorothea: Like and you know i do teach this stuff sadie you know my email address you (01:54:29):
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Dorothea: can totally ask me questions. (01:54:32):
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Sadie: That's true yeah That's true. (01:54:34):
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Jonny: And like, like one of the things I have come to love in this world, (01:54:38):
undefined

Jonny: you know, the few things that you can love in it. (01:54:44):
undefined

Jonny: It's just like, every time you get close to something, like you just like realize (01:54:46):
undefined

Jonny: that it's all just people. (01:54:51):
undefined

Jonny: And that's just like all these things that are these immutable features of the world. (01:54:53):
undefined

Jonny: One day you might just come face to face with like, Oh, that was you. (01:54:58):
undefined

Jonny: And then just be able to be just like, like that just like yeah all of a sudden (01:55:02):
undefined

Jonny: it makes sense where it's like i get why it is that way that just like you know (01:55:09):
undefined

Jonny: you knowing the beef and knowing the people is the way to know the thing yep. (01:55:13):
undefined

Sadie: It all makes sense now. (01:55:18):
undefined

Dorothea: Oh glad to hear it thanks y'all i as always love being on the on the podcast. (01:55:23):
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Justin: Yeah oh thank you so so much for coming on yeah thanks and i'm glad we got to do this. (01:55:28):
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Jonny: Yep yes good to see you yet again let's let's find time to watch a movie sometime (01:55:34):
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Jonny: soon it's been a while yes. (01:55:40):
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Justin: Oh yeah i need to do more i need to do more movies in the in the discord which (01:55:42):
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Justin: i was about to plug because dorothea you've also been answering questions in (01:55:46):
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Justin: the discord it's very helpful yes and we appreciate it it's. (01:55:48):
undefined

Jay: Just us shit posting and you being helpful yeah. (01:55:53):
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Dorothea: Well i mean you know that's and worse the way it usually is. (01:55:56):
undefined

Dorothea: Everybody else is being helpful, and I'm shit-missing. So, hey! (01:56:01):
undefined

Sadie: Even the score. (01:56:04):
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Justin: Good night. (01:56:07):
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135 - The Once and Future Linked Open Data feat. Dorothea and Jonny

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}135 - The Once and Future Linked Open Data feat. Dorothea and Jonny