Why we can't give up the concept of document in the era of Linked Data

Linked Data represent one of the most interesting and effective uses of open data, allowing the connection of data hosted by multiple digital archives and thus producing innovative information systems. On the other hand, they involve a few problems such as data sources and coarse data: that's why the more the deconstructive logic implied by Linked Data moves the concept of document to the background, the more we can't give it up, because only by preserving the concept of document we can contain the information “liquidity” into stable structures that are essential for our lives and society.I Linked Data rappresentano una delle forme di utilizzo più interessanti e proficue dei dati aperti, dal momento che offrono la possibilità di correlare i contenuti di differenti archivi digitali realizzando strumenti informativi estremamente innovativi. Tuttavia comportano anche alcuni problemi, fra i quali spiccano la provenienza dei dati e la loro granularità. Per far fronte a questi problemi è importante non abbandonare il concetto di documento, tanto più cruciale proprio nel momento in cui la logica della decostruzione sottesa ai Linked Data sembra porlo in secondo piano. Solo mantenendo in vita il concetto di documento, infatti, è possibile contenere la “liquidità” dell’informazione in strutture che possiedano quegli elementi di stabilità caratteristici (anche se non esclusivi) della tradizione bibliografica e che sono di fondamentale importanza per la costruzione della realtà sociale

Distributed Semantic Social Networks: Architecture, Protocols and Applications

Online social networking has become one of the most popular services on the Web. Especially Facebook with its 845Mio+ monthly active users and 100Mrd+ friendship relations creates a Web inside the Web. Drawing on the metaphor of islands, Facebook is becoming more like a continent. However, users are locked up on this continent with hardly any opportunity to communicate easily with users on other islands and continents or even to relocate trans-continentally. In addition to that, privacy, data ownership and freedom of communication issues are problematically in centralized environments. The idea of distributed social networking enables users to overcome the drawbacks of centralized social networks. The goal of this thesis is to provide an architecture for distributed social networking based on semantic technologies. This architecture consists of semantic artifacts, protocols and services which enable social network applications to work in a distributed environment and with semantic interoperability. Furthermore, this thesis presents applications for distributed semantic social networking and discusses user interfaces, architecture and communication strategies for this application category.Soziale Netzwerke gehören zu den beliebtesten Online Diensten im World Wide Web. Insbesondere Facebook mit seinen mehr als 845 Mio. aktiven Nutzern im Monat und mehr als 100 Mrd. Nutzer- Beziehungen erzeugt ein eigenständiges Web im Web. Den Nutzern dieser Sozialen Netzwerke ist es jedoch schwer möglich mit Nutzern in anderen Sozialen Netzwerken zu kommunizieren oder aber mit ihren Daten in ein anderes Netzwerk zu ziehen. Zusätzlich dazu werden u.a. Privatsphäre, Eigentumsrechte an den eigenen Daten und uneingeschränkte Freiheit in der Kommunikation als problematisch empfunden. Die Idee verteilter Soziale Netzwerke ermöglicht es, diese Probleme zentralisierter Sozialer Netzwerke zu überwinden. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Darstellung einer Architektur verteilter Soziale Netzwerke welche auf semantischen Technologien basiert. Diese Architektur besteht aus semantischen Artefakten, Protokollen und Diensten und ermöglicht die Kommunikation von Sozialen Anwendungen in einer verteilten Infrastruktur. Darüber hinaus präsentiert diese Arbeit mehrere Applikationen für verteilte semantische Soziale Netzwerke und diskutiert deren Nutzer-Schnittstellen, Architektur und Kommunikationsstrategien.