Permaculture Database

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

My Facebook comments in a thread with a programmer friend at Facebook:
(just winging it here but maybe some of you will find this interesting)

I surely would like to discuss "the link" more. Your statement about 
Diaspora: "user experience rather than what matters first: the link." is 
interesting. With privacy and security issues adequately addressed then 
a social network can "link" user's content to external resoirces. Google 
search engine indexing of this content is one example and another is 
using something like the Semantic Web to make this content portable so 
that it can be merged with that of users to help build topical 
"databases", wikis (like Mediawiki utilizing Semantic Mediawiki (I have 
both of these installed for my eventual use in webspace I own). Global 
"databases" serving people by disseminating knowledge about 
permaculture, natural biointensive agriculture and food production 
systems, energy, housing, healthcare seed and plant preservation. I 
participated in a permaculture database, or knowledgebase, project that 
attempted to build such an online interactive system. We still have a 
small group interested in working on this project.

"About semantic web, yes it's something I want to see more and more. The 
project Refuge is actually towards that approach as well. Even if it's 
more oriented towards datasets and their use."

When you mentioned linking I thought of external linking, i.e. html 
rather than internal or "hyper" links (#, etc.) but of course that is 
just as important. Our PC DB project hoped to use advanced web protocols 
to enable portability of ours and others' respective knoledgebases so 
that all sites would benefit from data stored at any individual 
knowledgebase. We started with PHP/MySQL and then went to a wiki, 
Mediawiki. The staff at ibiblio installed Mediawiki and Semantic 
Mediawiki for me in my webspace there (www.ibiblio.org/permaculture). 
There are several people in my permaculture mailing list who are still 
interested in this project.

Using the Semantic Web as a development platform for a global 
permaculture and home and market food production knowledgebase you would 
have both backward and forward compatibility when bringing existing 
systems or sites on board to be included in cross-site data sharing. I 
am not a programmer so am just winging it. I just found this interesting 
article at: http://www.bio-itworld.com/BioIT_Article.aspx?id=47646.... 
"At its best, the Semantic Web aspires to enable enhanced intelligent 
connectivity between all forms of data and information available in a 
user’s work environment (see “Masters of the Semantic Web,” October 2005 
Bio-IT World, page 28). Its vision of simple and direct access to 
knowledge, both within and outside the organization, has the potential 
to accelerate and add knowledge to decision making with little or no 
need to know or understand where data or information is physically 
located and what form it is in." Also: Social networks and the Semantic Web
By Peter Mika at Google Books (url too long to post here). And also: 
"The idea of a 'semantic web' — this notion of adding machine-readable 
tags to web pages so that a computer can read and 'understand' the text 
and data — has been around for years." 
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060522/full/news060522-21.html and ""the 
device formerly known as the mobile phone". The imminence of wireless 
broadband for mobiles means we are about to enter the phase of mobile 
and ubiquitous computing. It is also going to bring the Internet to the 
hundreds of millions of people who have no Internet access. We are 
talking now about creating mobile phones — devices — for $15 dollars 
apiece.".
Semantic Web at the Cusp of Reality - Bio-IT World
www.bio-itworld.com

LL