2003-04-23

Gonzo Collaborative Mapping on the Semantic Web
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2003/view/e_sess/3633
Jo Walsh


space.frot.org

spacenamespace
. semantic web mapping spatial modelling
. collaborative mapping
. MUD world isomorphic to our own
. RESTful RDF interface

http://logicmoo.sf.net
. a mud world build on the CYC ontology [!!! incredible!]
. bots travelling on it and reasoning about it
. jo made a RDF model of thing
. and ended up making a RDF model of London:

'mudlondon' is the RDF model
-> places are URIs
. can be explored like a mud

-> RDF is just a graph

so the mud bot in jabber backs straight onto the rdf representation. this is
like the protocol stack.

[this is an excellent talk]

the labels are drawn from FOAF, dublin core, and spacenamespace

so just like a mud you can add geographic points to the rdf graph of london:
connect it, annotate it. [what an interface! so perfect, fit for purpose]

locations can have pointers to other places on the web

bot uses GET and POST to query and update the model, using RDF. so anything can
sit on top of it.

you can also build trails on top of this: 'en route' mode

temporal waypoints on a journey. record a route around london. [the underlying
technology is abstracted very nicely here. doing something naturally, and
capturing the data as a graph]

quote from hofstadter, "GEB": the author talks about his semantic network.
these ideas have history.
two americas: a normal map, and a blank map with the human features removed.
and just your own map on top of it.

geopositioning on the semantic web
. FOAF (travel itineraries, people world map)
. picture annotation
. web annotation blogosphere.headmap.org
. collaborative location annotation, RestuarantRecommendation
[all interesting projects] 

http://grault.net/grubstreet/ the open source guide to london, uses RDF and RSS

"everyone can see a little bit of the picture"

collaborative ontologies
. when mudlondon is told about new types of space, it submits them to an
"ontobot" over jabber
[and some other stuff on this slide, looked very cool. something about OWL and
exploring ontologies. sounds like the "caves" in Egan's Diaspora]

walsh moves on to show a visualisation: a tube map generated from the RDF
locations of tube maps.

"london is where you pop out of the tube stations at certain points"

SVG is useful for cartography.

[this is brilliant. all tiny technologies, implemented easily, XML, RDF,
existing libraries, all joined together, reusing standards. proper loosely
joined stuff. this and the semantic indexing thing: two favourite sessions so
far, but this is better]

we could be building old londons, the mudlondon of samuel pepys, the "trace of
pepys as he wanders round". just the rdf graph, and using FOAF.

"externalising the mental map"

we build up a bigger picture from individual, interconnected models.

problems with mapping the UK
. collaborate mapping is driven by necessity
. it's copyright in the UK
. even the outline shape is copyright
. http://www.freedata.ca/why-free.html (or with an underscore)
. local government wastes money having to buy that data

although UK is closed, US and Denmark is open

collaborative cartography is a potential exit route from hegemony

there are also RDF based spatial models for exchange of wireless
[i want to know if this could tie in to the public lettering project]

"shit, i wish i had my bot in my pocket" [:)]
"and that doesn't seem so far off" [wicked. so far ahead]

clay asks about psychological distance. jo:
this is 1km as the crow flies, but 30km winding. or "i'd rather not take the
tube if it's between 7 and 9 in the morning". it's very subjective, needs more
works on the rulesets.

"cartographic congress" in london in the next month or two: sociological,
theory, artists, code -- 6 week happening of mapping events in london over
may/june.

clay: there's a project about street level mapping, "facades".

"stateful conversation interfaces" -- her name for bots

[utterly incredible. everything else we've been to this year is iterative, but
this is so way ahead, a completely different level. wow.]

http://space.frot.org -- hopefully the slides will be online soon, there's so
much more in them
http://space.frot.org/etcon.html