Evolving knowledge through negotiation
This tackles a communication accuracy issue in semantic web systems for users and developers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing model theory and proposes potential solutions without new empirical results.
The paper addresses the problem of meaning preservation in semantic web pipelines, where human-provided information may have narrower interpretations than semantic technologies allow, leading to communication deficiencies. It suggests that overcoming this requires interactive feedback or context preservation, drawing on insights from social science and humanities.
Semantic web information is at the extremities of long pipelines held by human beings. They are at the origin of information and they will consume it either explicitly because the information will be delivered to them in a readable way, or implicitly because the computer processes consuming this information will affect them. Computers are particularly capable of dealing with information the way it is provided to them. However, people may assign to the information they provide a narrower meaning than semantic technologies may consider. This is typically what happens when people do not think their assertions as ambiguous. Model theory, used to provide semantics to the information on the semantic web, is particularly apt at preserving ambiguity and delivering it to the other side of the pipeline. Indeed, it preserves as much interpretations as possible. This quality for reasoning efficiency, becomes a deficiency for accurate communication and meaning preservation. Overcoming it may require either interactive feedback or preservation of the source context. Work from social science and humanities may help solving this particular problem.