Decentralizing the Semantic Web (DeSemWeb2017)

ISWC2017 Proposal for an Emerging Workshop

Abstract

The Semantic Web is increasingly becoming a centralized story: we rely on large-scale server-side infrastructures to perform intense reasoning, data mining, and query execution. Therefore, we urgently need research and engineering to bring back the “Web” to the Semantic Web, aiming for intelligent clients—instead of intelligent servers—as sketched in the original Semantic Web vision. The DeSemWeb2017 workshop purposely takes a radical perspective by focusing solely on decentralized and client-side applications, to counterbalance the centralized discourse of other tracks. While we recognize the value in all subfields of the Semantic Web, we see an urgent need to revalue the role of clients. This proposal details the topics and motivation of the workshop, as well as the organisational aspects. We believe this proposal will help put different topics on the Semantic Web community’s research agenda, which should lead to new inspiration and initiatives to build future Semantic Web and Linked Data applications.

Topics

The workshop focuses on the following topics and related subjects:

Motivation

Despite its decentralized architecture, the Web has become increasingly centralized the past couple of years. A large part of the Semantic Web community seems to follow this movement: only a minority of ISWC papers of last year focused on the “Web” aspect of the Semantic Web. While we agree that there is value in all of the aspects of the Semantic Web (databases, logic, reasoning, streams, services, …), this workshop aims to revalue “Web” as an important topic and, together with “Semantic”, as a major differentiator from other communities.

Initiatives such as Linked Data traversal-based query evaluation and, recently, Linked Data Notifications, reveal the powerful combination of semantics and decentralization. Works focusing on in-browser code execution, such as client-side SPARQL query evaluation by Linked Data Fragments, leverage the significant CPU power every client brings to enhance the scalability of Semantic Web applications. However, much more research is needed to fully explore the opportunities semantic technologies bring to decentralization and vice-versa.

Hence, this workshop is highly relevant for ISWC participants, and timely to help counterbalance the ongoing centralization.

Length

We propose a full-day workshop, split into two events. The first event will be run like a regular workshop, where participants will have a chance to present their work. For the second event, we will have a panel for discussion with invited speakers.

Format

The morning will start with a thought-provoking keynote on the current state of the (Semantic) Web, and why decentralization is crucial for the future. After discussion with the speaker, we continue with talks by members of the community. These can be lightning talks, article presentations, demonstrations, and other forms of contributions.

In the afternoon, depending on the number of submissions, we might first have another slot of talks, where we will emphasize industry-focused contributions. After this, we will have a slot where invited speakers and members of the audience can debate over pressing questions regarding the future of the (Semantic) Web and the role decentralization can play herein. Instead of asking the question whether the Semantic Web needs decentralization, we will turn the tables and discuss about whether decentralization needs the Semantic Web. We expect this to result in lively discussions and new insights.

Audience

We expect to attract people interested in Linked Data consumption on the Web, drawing for instance from the popular but discontinued COLD workshop series. Also, people with a focus on a wide range of applications, with the Web as common denominator, are expected. Additionally, we hope to draw in new audience members from Web and decentralized communities, as well as startups and businesses that do not have a Semantic Web background but would like to become part of a decentralized Web. We aim for an audience of at least 20 people, but our ambition would be to reach between 30 and 40.

Community

The following recent publications prove that a wide community exists to cover the core topics of this workshop:

Chairs

Ruben Verborgh

Ghent University – imec, Belgium

https://ruben.verborgh.org/

[Ruben Verborgh]

Ruben Verborgh is a researcher in semantic hypermedia at Ghent University – imec, Belgium and a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders. He explores the connection between Semantic Web technologies and the Web’s architectural properties, with the ultimate goal of building more intelligent clients. Along the way, he became fascinated by Linked Data, REST/hypermedia, Web APIs, and related technologies. He’s a co-author of two books on Linked Data, and has contributed to more than 200 publications for international conferences and journals on Web-related topics.

Andrei Sambra

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

https://people.csail.mit.edu/asambra/

[Andrei Sambra]

Andrei Sambra is a researcher at MIT, working on Small (Linked) Data – personal data/content about a specific user. He is interested in topics such as identity, authentication, data ownership, and in general by all Web technologies that help re-decentralize the Web. He is also a W3C Team member, where he participates in Web standards work on topics ranging from identity, authentication and also Semantic Web technologies.

Tobias Kuhn

VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands

http://www.tkuhn.org/

[Tobias Kuhn]

Tobias Kuhn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at VU University Amsterdam. He is interested in socio-technical systems, in particular the Web and the system of scientific communication and collaboration, and he investigates how software tools can help us to better organize human knowledge.

Program Committee

The following people could be potential PC members.