More Serendipity
[Warning: the links in this post are not static, and may not exisit for long]
The online Cypher demo has some simple demo lexemes for the dbpedia, such as relationships between writers, books, films, actors, among a few others. I ran some very simple inputs, and serenpitiously noticed some interesting facts (new knowledge for me):
- I always thought Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were married, and also, I assumed that Billy Bob Thorton was her only previous husband, but Cypher says not so. By sending a plain and natural statement describing my interest, I was able to instantly discover knowledge I thought I had (based on dbpedia):
- Cypher said that only three US Presidents have ever written books, I would have thought every US President since, say 1940, would have written at least one book (click the book link to see the author and other metadata for that book):
- Cypher says that only three First Ladies have every written books, I would have expected more
- There have been more US Presidents who have been in/on film than have written books (could Andrew Johnson have possibliy been in a film???, or is that an error in dbpedia?)
This type if serendipity is only possible once the barriers to such queries are lowered by tools like the Cypher. Cypher is a key part of the infrastructure for the semantic applications of tomorrow, where data and functionality is pulled down to the user on demand, through tools like ubiquity firefox (http://tinyurl.com/5m9lhb) , as opposed to the pre-packaged market of today where data is delivered as web pages. In this vision, the results of SPARQL queries, articulated as natural language descriptions and statements, will be feed directly into other services to produce dynamic, complex functionality, and deliver services to the user that the data and service publishers could not intend.
The online Cypher demo has some simple demo lexemes for the dbpedia, such as relationships between writers, books, films, actors, among a few others. I ran some very simple inputs, and serenpitiously noticed some interesting facts (new knowledge for me):
- I always thought Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were married, and also, I assumed that Billy Bob Thorton was her only previous husband, but Cypher says not so. By sending a plain and natural statement describing my interest, I was able to instantly discover knowledge I thought I had (based on dbpedia):
| the husbands of Angelina Jolie |
|---|
| Billy_Bob_Thornton |
| Jonny_Lee_Miller |
- Cypher said that only three US Presidents have ever written books, I would have thought every US President since, say 1940, would have written at least one book (click the book link to see the author and other metadata for that book):
- Cypher says that only three First Ladies have every written books, I would have expected more
| the wives of presidents wrote what |
|---|
| An_Invitation_to_the_White_House:_At_Home_with_History |
| Living_History |
| It_Takes_a_Village |
| My_Turn_%28memoir%29 |
- There have been more US Presidents who have been in/on film than have written books (could Andrew Johnson have possibliy been in a film???, or is that an error in dbpedia?)
This type if serendipity is only possible once the barriers to such queries are lowered by tools like the Cypher. Cypher is a key part of the infrastructure for the semantic applications of tomorrow, where data and functionality is pulled down to the user on demand, through tools like ubiquity firefox (http://tinyurl.com/5m9lhb) , as opposed to the pre-packaged market of today where data is delivered as web pages. In this vision, the results of SPARQL queries, articulated as natural language descriptions and statements, will be feed directly into other services to produce dynamic, complex functionality, and deliver services to the user that the data and service publishers could not intend.
Labels: cypher, Dbpedia, serendipity
