Academic FOAF – good or bad?

Writing about web page http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/

Yesterday something happened that reminded me of Kieran's interest in the academic use of FOAF (friend of a friend) networks.

I had a fascinating meeting yesterday with Jonathan Vickery of the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies. Although being oriented towards some specific projects relating to learning technology, the discussion was necessarily wide ranging, covering issues such as the convergence of design practices, creativity and culture, creativity and education, aesthetics, and much more. We seemed to be thinking along very similar tracks, with a similar mixture of philosophical perspective and practical perspectives on creativity, design, technology and aesthetics.

After about one and a half hours, Jonathan asked me about my background. So I explained about the strange convolutions of my career through teaching, AI, and working for an international criminal conspiracy. And of course I explained that my studies at Warwick in the Philosophy Department were fundamental. At which point connections started to appear that at least in part might explain our similar viewpoints. Anyway, i've invented a FOAF description, which is an attenmpt to illustrate how this might work. It is based partly on the standard FOAF schema. However, the FOAF relationship schema isn't descriptive of academic relationships, so i've come up with a rudimentary idea of how academic relationships would be represented….


<foaf:Person>
<foaf:Firstname>Robert</foaf:Firstname>
<foaf:Surname>O'Toole</foaf:Surname>
<foaf-academic:Tutor>Nick Land</foaf-academic:Tutor>
<foaf-academic:graduated-from>Warwick University</foaf-academic:graduated-from>
<foaf-academic:IT-advising>Jonathon Vickery</foaf-academic:IT-advising>
</foaf:Person>

<foaf:Person>
<foaf:Firstname>Nick</foaf:Firstname>
<foaf:Surname>Land</foaf:Surname>
<foaf-academic:Tutee>Robert O'Toole</foaf-academic:Tutee>
<foaf-academic:Supervisor>Jay Bernstein</foaf-academic:Supervisor>
<foaf-academic:graduated-from>Essex University</foaf-academic:graduated-from>
</foaf:Person>


So you can see that both my peronal tutor and Jonathan had Jay Bernstein as their PhD supervisor. Jonathan had never met Nick, but had heard the usual legendary stories. The question is, would all academics who have a link to the 'dark one' (as he is often known) want to have this link publicly represented on the web? If so, perhaps they could make use of some of the more descriptive attributes of the relationship schema, such as 'enemy-of'.

I think academic foaf is a good idea, especially once profiles contain more descriptive information about projects and research interests. But like all these things, there are interesting cultural and psychological issues to explore.

Robert O'Toole : 19 Aug 2004 09:34 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem