Hot on IA Summit: Semantic web and permanent links

Chris Thorne from BBC held an interesting speech on the IA Summit regarding the importance of persistent URIs in building a semantic web.

What is the semantic web?

The Internet is designed to be understood by humans, not computers. When reading the word “Apple”, the first thing that comes to mind may be a fruit, an electronics and software company or a record label. Computers have a hard time understanding the difference. The semantic web is a web that machines can understand, by publishing in a language that computers can process and link.

Why is persistent URIs important in a semantic web?

Prince Rogers Nelson, better known as Prince, has been known by various names through his career, amongst them simply a symbol:

Between 1993 and 2000, he was referred to as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. The problem then is, that if the URIs of pages about Prince should change every time he rebranded himself, all links to those pages would break, and the Google PageRank would drop (since fewer pages are linking to them). BBC is collaborating with Musicbrainz, which has developed a system of unique identifiers for all artists, releases, tracks, labels and discs. This allows for permanent links to artists, even though they change their name. The unique ID for Prince on Musicbrainz.org is 070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e, and by using the same identifier, several organisations are able to identify and exchange data about this artist.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e

http://musicbrainz.org/artist/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e.html

http://www.last.fm/mbid/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e

How user friendly is this approach?

http://www.last.fm/mbid/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e is ugly. It’s impossible to deduce from the URI what page to expect, let alone remembering the address. So, is the use of unique identifiers a step backwards in terms of usability? Last.fm’s approach is to forward the user to http://www.last.fm/music/Prince, which undoubtedly is easier on the eye. However, forwarding is but a temporary solution, and it is said to have a negative effect on the Google PageRank.

Cool URIs don’t change, Tim Berners-Lee

Do we have to make a choice between readability and a semantic web, between humans and computers? Could we envision a web with a dual address system, where semantic links are used and understood by computers only, while readable versions are used and shown to humans?

See also Chris Thorne’s presentation on Slideshare.