This text contains an invitation for participation or investing, addressed to people who have strategic thinking and give priority to future and creativity over the past and passiveness.
This is a new technology, a new method for representing and processing the information. Instead of the old, originating from the mathematics method, there comes a new, semantic method, based on the principles of intelligence.
This text is not structured hierarchically by semantic reasons - every paragraph can belong to more than one theme.
Today the main source of wealth is the creativity in the area of the new high technologies.
The new technology is much more than a new computer program or a new software product. Because of its great superiority, the semantic technology will replace the old technologies, and will provoke redistribution of the market.
Whereas a new computer software product based on the old technologies can bring you 20 or 50 million US dollars (if your company is not Microsoft), the new semantic technology reveals possibilities to earn hundreds of billion of US dollars. I'm speaking about worldwide markets, including software products markets.
This is a deep change from formal computation into dealing with the meaning of the information; this is a shift from the form to the content; this is a shift from procedural to descriptive.
The legislation is important for the business. Today changes in a law become a part of the software of a company for months or even years. That is what conventional information technologies can do, in particular computer programming technologies.
The new semantic technology allows the changes in the law to become a part of the company's software in minutes or hours after their publishing. This is possible because the new technology allows avoiding the expensive, slow and whimsical work of computer programmers.
In addition to increase of the speed, the new technology also increases the covering of the information. Current software products automate only a small part of the law - not more than a few hundred of all existing in the law concepts and actions. The new semantic technology can cover all the law - dozens of thousands of concepts and actions that exist in the law.
The main technical aspect of the new technology is that things are presented in the information system not as conventional formal files and records, but as elements-bearers of sense or intellectual units, which are on one hand separate, but on the other hand can join together and make new sense elements. So these elements, like atoms, do form whole information universes. Analogues of these elements are the words of our language (more precisely - the structures in our brains, that are denoted by the words). In the language, joining of verbs, nouns, adjectives and other sense bearers leads to creation of new bearers of sense - the sentences or thoughts.
The new semantic technology replaces the sequential instruction execution in the conventional software with connections and interactions between intellectual units.
The semantic technology stores and processes the information in a way many times closer to reality, true to the life, than old technologies do. The semantic technology is closer to life because the world is built up not of data, but of huge amount and diversity of structured units, which connect and interact in thousand ways.
I think that it is better to set a goal as high as possible and to try to achieve it step by step, than to do what every day brings.
I'm interested in capturing the market, not in making a scientific or technological achievement.
For me business has always been the main field for applying the new technology.
There is an initiative, called Semantic Web, comparatively close to my goals, and although it smells of academism and is rather far from the business, it is initiated by the creator of World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee and is worth seeing (www.w3.org/2001/sw/, www.daml.org/).
Another initiative, comparatively close to mine, is The Associative Model of Data of Simon Williams (www.lazysoft.com). The man is from the business, but there is not enough semantics in his approach.
A third initiative similar to mine is Cyc of Douglas Lenat (www.cyc.com). These people have already accumulated 1.000.000 rules and facts from different areas of life aiming to achieve a "common sense". This reveals that their effort is scientific, but not practical.
In different universities and organizations are created the so-called "ontologies", see www.daml.org,www.ontology.org, www.ontoknowledge.org. Briefly said, this approach is too narrow-theoretical for the business practice.
There are many companies including IBM and Microsoft, which work to create more intelligent software. The shortest possible assessment is that traditional thinking predominates there.
Today all of the old technologies are sentenced to replacement by more improved ones. The conventional information technologies are too old. Computer programming technology is 40-years old, relational database technology is 30-years old. The computers are much more quick, interfaces are graphical, functions are more, but principles of software building are the same - with its very low productivity and with its impossibility to eradicate errors. Today we have Internet, but the main information unit there is the HTML-file, which is a text with pictures - at least five thousand years old technology for information storing and processing.
You know the relation between the ingenious and the simplicity. In order to be an achievement of genius or very intelligent, as I say it is, the new technology must be based on very simple structure for storing and processing the information - a structure that allows uniform representing of diverse information objects and its relations. Compare it to DNA and its four building elements, or to the brain and its neurons and synapses. This structure can be described as a triple relation 'semantic unit' - 'relation' - 'semantic unit'.
Let's realize the huge omission of opportunity due to the fact, that information technologies are not yet semantic - incompatibility, incoherence, low productivity are three of main properties of the conventional information technologies.
Here is the place to mention how the new semantic technology will change Internet. From an enormous web of interrelated text units (HTML-files), Internet becomes a web of semantically interrelated semantic units. Internet will consist of semantic servers controlling a semantic information base, universal or more specific in his thematic orientation. There will be also a semantic 'Yahoo', i.e. an index of semantic units - persons, cities, goods, etc., not of pages as is Yahoo today.
An integral part of the semantic technology is its ability to translate from one language to another. It is not a separate module linked by a few functions as it is in the conventional software. This ability results from the organization of semantic units in the semantic technology. All semantic units are denoted by natural language words or combination of words from many languages, so the translation is a flow of activity from incoming words to semantic units and then to words in the other language.
It is not necessary to mention that an integral part of a semantic system is its ability to interact in English, Bulgarian or other language, in order to understand and answer natural language questions.
All information units are subjected to semantic transformation - even "simple" letters and numbers cease to be computer memory cells and turn into semantic units, structured as all other semantic units and having many relations to other semantic units.
It is not a question of this specific technology; it is a question of choosing a direction in a world, which becomes more and more technology-orientated.
An important aspect of the new technology is the dependency on size. To work well a semantic system needs to be big. The bigger is it - the better it works (setting aside other factors).
Today, business copes with so much and so complex information, with so many relations, that conventional business software looks miserable and is not able to do all that it must do. Briefly, the newest software products of Oracle, IBM and Microsoft do not suit requirements of the business. Just because they are based on non-adequate technological principles.
In contrast, the semantic technology can suit present business' requirements, and go beyond.
Please remember that computer information technologies are the field where with minimum investments one can earn maximum money. All you need is more grey matter, boldness and a new technology.
Building an application in semantic technology is mainly building a big base of semantic objects and relations.
Building a traditional application is mainly building of an empty data processing mechanism.
In the new technology there is also software written in some traditional programming language because there is not a semantic operating system yet. But programs in the new technology are just small bridges, transitional layers between computer hardware and low-level software and the semantic system.
What is the importance of the mathematics and formal logic - the basement of contemporary information technologies? Firstly, for the physics - a science for abstract bodies and corpuscles, mathematics is of great importance, physics is based on mathematics. Secondly, for the chemistry - a science for more complex structures like molecules, mathematics has lesser importance. Lastly, for biology - a science for extremely complex structures - living beings, mathematics is of extremely small importance. In fact, biological systems cannot be described mathematically. Draw your conclusions in what degree conventional information systems are adequate, if business processes and business objects are even more complex than biological ones.
The first semantic technology application I'm working on is business-oriented. I need some more months to complete it. It will semantically incorporate a big amount of information concerning an enterprise - law, technology, market, accounting, personnel and others. Sure it will be an application for practical work, not a reference book.
Probably there is no other person who has invested so big part of his time and his efforts, in the development of the new technology and probably there is no other person, who has entered so deeply the principles of the intellect from the point of view of making it as a semantic system.
It cannot be said that someone deserves his future, if he does not contribute to it. If someone is just a consumer of achievements of the others, he stays in the past forever.
Today, to be a leader, to deserve respect, means to make projects, to make things, which no one has made before, to extract value from nought, from an intangible dream. Who is not oriented enough into future, will not live well enough in the present.
Until recently, computers were with too slow CPUs and with too little RAM to be ready for semantic computing. If there is only a few megahertz and megabytes, the only possible form of computation is the traditional one.
There are two kinds of difficulties in the development of something new: firstly, difficulty of unknown; secondly, difficulty of too much work to do. For me the first kind of difficulty does not exist any more.
I do not believe that the scientists, who are specialists in artificial intelligence, can make market accept intelligent technologies. Firstly, they are lecturers. Secondly, they are narrow specialists; they usually have not wide enough thinking necessary for semantic technology. Thirdly, they have thinking of books, I mean, they repeat the things said by someone like Marvin Minsky, and do what the others do.
All persons share (understand, make use of) the same semantic units - concepts, which are denoted by words and word groups that are common for all people (common at least for the speakers of a particular language). In contemporary information technologies the situation is different. Today every programmer invents its own 'words' (identifiers) and invents its own 'concepts' (data structures) for every new project he works on. This situation does not facilitate the exchange of experience or the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge can be accumulated only if there is a stable and widely accepted concept (a semantic unit) to accumulate something around it. The semantic technology changes the present technologic lack of communicativeness, because by definition it includes potentially all words and word groups from potentially all human languages, together with the semantic units which they denote.
One of the characteristics of the semantic technology is, that every individual semantic object can have 2 as well as 20000 attributes (relations), without complication of the structure, without serious slow-down of the search and the execution.
This is in contrast with relational databases, where every individual record can have as many attributes as columns the table that includes that record has. No more, no less.
Every time I start writing a new computer program, I very quickly fall in a situation where limitations of the old technology become so frustrating, that I feel forced to switch to work on semantic technology, because I see it as the only solution of all present-day technological problems. It could be said, that I'm a programmer in the traditional sense, only concerning creation of semantic technology.
Something more about reducing data structures to one: if you represent the colour of an object as an attribute or field of the object, not as relation between that object and an object-colour, then the program must "know" what that attribute means. This destroys the most important principle of a semantic system - to be semantic. In the semantic technology the meaning is wholly contained in the system of semantic objects and their relations. The meaning is not dispersed in programme's code, files and anywhere (as it is in the conventional popular information technologies).
The dreamers are the most practical persons. Henry Ford and Bill Gates are for sure dreamers, and they are for sure very successful persons. The dreamer sees better the future so he can move into the right direction more quickly than other people (who often consider themselves practical).
The semantic technology converts into semantic units (and replaces) the source code of software products, texts processed by programs like MS Word, spreadsheets processed by programs like MS Excel, tables processed by programs like MS Access, texts of pages from Internet, texts of e-mails from Internet, also converts information from other sources and file formats.
The semantic technology washes away the borders between different software applications, between different databases, between different texts and between different Internet pages.
The semantic technology decreases dependence of the businessmen from narrow-specialized, highly paid and whimsical programmers.
The semantic technology shifts the stress from the software into the information.
This text represents a strategic direction for operation. In the history the strategy was the main cause for every success.
The traditional information technologies 'understand' only of '1000'.
The semantic information technology understands '1000', 'a thousand', 'the thousand', 'thousands', 'many', etc.
In the semantic information technology information systems are developped not by writing new software versions, but by enriching existing systems with new semantic elements and relations. It is because the functionality of a semantic system is almost entirely contained in the base of semantic elements (not in compiled code).
A question of psychology: the time when the semantic technology was of big psychological importance has passed. Today the semantic technology is only of big technologic and economic importance for me.
You know the words "Sow to reap".
It is a fact that people, who have invested in the Bill Gates' company in the very beginning, today are very rich.
There is no doubt that the most important capital is the information capital. And there is no better form of his existing than the semantic one.
The semantic information technology is radical so it is true, stable, long-term and universal.
Maybe the best illustration how primitive the current information technologies are is Internet searching. Even the simplest query often results in hundreds of thousands and millions found pages. The reason for such failure is that HTML-pages do not contain any semantics, understandable for the searching software.
Today technologic realities change very quickly, whereas the consciousness of people lags behind.
It is not a secret, that current information technologies cannot ensure full automation of information processes in an enterprise, nor between enterprises and their customers and governments. It ensures mainly the physical transfer of the information. But because of semantic incompatibility of the information there is no real automation, especially in its main aspect - the possibility computers to communicate semantically with each other.
Today merging of two enterprises is an usual task, while merging of their information systems is unusually difficult task, even if their database management systems come from the same manufacturer (say Microsoft's SQL Server). Tables with identical functionality have different names, columns with identical functionality have different names, types of columns with identical functionality are different, at least lengths of the fields are different, the number of columns in a table is different. If there by chance is coincidence of names, number, length etc., then certainly data will not match - in one table my name is 'G. Dimitrov', in another 'Georgi Dimitrov', in the third 'G Dimitrov'. In all three cases the names are totally different according to 'super-modern', 'ultra-perfected', multi-billion software products. Excuse me, but I can't respect the intellect of a person if he states that Silicon Valley companies develop high technologies. The precise and appropriate term is 'primitive technologies'.
I maintain that the most important thing in the information is its meaning. Current information technologies do not work with the meaning of the information. In this case, is it worth being called information technologies?
I take very deeply the computer information technologies, and that's why I want to perfect it to the same root.
The two main media for storing, publishing, exchange and processing information are the paper and the computer. At the moment there is transition from the paper to the computer as main information medium, but the tracks of the paper past of the information are still huge. The main forms of information in the computer are the text and the table (which is a text partitioned into rows and columns). The other forms of information are: drawing, picture, sound records, video records, executable programs (and some other). The text in the computer is a sequence of letters, digits and some other characters. It is the same with the papers. I.e. still information is structured in the computer the same way as in the paper - as sequence of characters. So to say, current information technologies fill the computers with the spirit of papers. Also current information technologies increase the mountains of real paper. The idea for paperless office failed. It was impossible to be implemented by the current information technologies.
The languages of the semantic information technology are semantic - the usual natural human languages that enable the communication between a human and a semantic system and between different semantic systems. Of course, semantic systems can interchange information in more formalized form (tables, XML-files, etc.), but still keeping relations to the meaning.
For a long time, during the period 1987-1994 object-oriented programming was the main subject of my interest, mostly the first language for object-oriented programming - Smalltalk. My interest was chiefly in the form "I want to build an object-oriented information system".
You can look at the semantic technology as the semantic future of object-oriented programming, which is the best form of programming now, because it is a little bit more semantic than older procedural programming. Nevertheless it is far from being really semantic.
Initially the building of a semantic base requires additional effort compared to building an usual database, not only due to vast quantity of information to enter, but also because the semantic technology in not widely known by mass information specialists. On the other hand, semantic technology is closer to human understanding, so it is intuitive. Besides the possibility of automatic information extraction from usual texts is very helpful in initial building.
Now I have tables with 50,000 words and its 1,000,000 forms. This base allows morphologic analysis of texts (see applied chapter from a book about book-keeping, in Bulgarian). I want to add also words from: a dictionary of Bulgarian language, a dictionary of foreign words in Bulgarian language, Bulgarian dictionary of synonyms and some other. These dictionaries are scanned and processed to some degree (50 - 80%). Totally words must become 100,000. I need about a month to complete this job.
Concerning English language words - there are plenty of dictionaries in Internet. The most important source is WordNet 1.7 from Princeton University, and although English language specialists have made it, not artificial intelligence scientists, it contains much semantic information like 'is-a', 'whole-part', and 'member-community'. The dictionary contains 109,000 synonym sets and 157,000 words. It allows automatic usage.
English-Bulgarian (230,000 senses) and Bulgarian-English (130,000) dictionaries. I have worked 3 months - scanning, cleaning from errors and splitting into senses. I also need a month to make them ready for automatic usage.
Once in the past I decided to go to the future, not to Canada.
What is very important in the semantic technology: semantic elements are a result of long-term accumulation.
Thence, instead of creating new and separate semantic elements, we make relations to already existing, common, universal semantic elements. An example: Every company has employees. If for every newly hired employee you enter his information from paper documents or from incompatible file formats, this means serious time and work over-expenditures. Furthermore the size of personnel information to enter and process continuously increases. If you download from Internet and use the global semantic element for that employee you avoid entering already existing information, and more important - you have access to potentially unlimited source of information about that person. Last but not least, if all people participate in this semantic agreement, then the society has an information system, much more perfect than of today.
Thence, informatics grows around semantic objects as one system.
On the contrary, now informatics grows around the software. Present software and information systems are in principle local and short-term phenomena.
Thence, the semantic information system is global. Thence, it is one, common and universal.
Thence, this is a revolution, but not because I'm a megalomaniac or because I have a whim. It is so just because the progress cannot be stopped until the absolute peak is reached.
The semantic information system is the absolute apogee of all information systems.
The semantic information system corresponds to the advancing global economy.
Furthermore, the most important material precondition - Internet, is here.
Developing one or another application based on semantic technology, in fact means developing one or another not yet developed part of the whole semantic system.
This is one of the main aspects of the semantic technology - the reuse of big amounts of information - already prepared elements - people, goods, companies, activities, populated places, countries, real estates, laws, units of measurement, streets, languages, government services, professions, projects of products, wars, purchases, weddings, births, travels, and many, many others.
Certainly, parts of the firm's information can be not widely accessible.
The semantic technology is based on concrete, pragmatic structure or model like the life itself. It is not based on abstract mathematical theory as the traditional information technologies are. While in traditional information technologies numbers are just numbers - 2, 56, 3922, etc., in the semantic technology there aren't just numbers, but mostly weights, lengths, counts, sums and other quantitative semantic elements.
I'm owner of a rare, unique know-how, I have passed the threshold between a theoretician and a practician, I have a comprehensive and profound outlook towards presented subject, I'm more than ever convinced in the correctness of the chosen direction, and I'm ready to take the responsibility for the semantic future of the information technologies not only in Bulgaria, but world-wide. I don't feel awkward about stating this, because the semantic technology requires large scales - the bigger a semantic system is, the better.
The technological progress has never consisted of endless accumulating. Qualitative change comes sooner or later.
Conforming to the context is inherent to semantic technology. Semantic means context-aware. This is opposed to the endless execution of instruction sequences.
The semantic unit, the word 'house' (not the concept 'house') is represented by its relations with following semantic units: (concept) 'house', 'Bulgarian language', 'noun', 'feminine gender', 'grammatical indefiniteness', 'singular', at last the string 'house'.
More technically speaking, a semantic unit is an index (a list) of all contexts and situations in which it participates; of all actions which it performs; of all its parts, attributes and substances; of all opinions, statements and attitudes about it; of all its states, forms and roles; of all words, names and expressions, denoting it.
A date in the semantic systems is the semantic element 'day', which in a particular calendar has a number (e.g. '2'), is a part of some month (e.g. 'February'), which in turn, is a part of some year (e.g. '2003').
A semantic system resembles a well-organized human brain. By the way, I have never heard of better, more intelligent system for representing and processing the information than the human brain.
I want to start an organization 'The semantic technology for more wealthy future', which includes specialists as well businessmen.
Worshipping God, e.g. the most high being, the best thing, the most beautiful thing, the full truth, makes a person pure, raises him, and gives sense to his life. The impact of working on the semantic technology - the most high information technology - is similar, taking into account that a technology is less than the life.
The semantic technology, having higher intelligence, due to using of abstractions, permits expressing more with fewer words.
The semantic technology supports identity. In the whole semantic system there is only one semantic element representing a specific number (for example the number 7). In every place where this number is used, we have a reference to the only semantic element for the number, instead having a new and separate semantic element for that number. If instead of one, we had two, it could happen so that the first has the name 'sedem' (in Bulgarian), while the second - 'seven' (in English). So, instead of knowing the name of the number '7' in two languages, sometimes it will be 'sedem', sometimes - 'seven'. This state, using a term from psychology, is a sickness, called schizophrenia.
In this text sometimes I make assertions that may sound bombastic to someone. It is not because I want to assert myself; it comes from my ambition to stick to the true state of things. The style of this text is a little bit more semantic, a little bit more human than a traditional scientific or administrative text.
To underscore, we model semantically in the stage of initial development every common word, every common word group, every common term from the natural language, science, law, army, sports, etc., in the corresponding context. A fundamental rule for building a semantic system is to model existing, widely known objects from the practice, instead of creating own, private semantic units, having no widely accepted names. Private decisions are acceptable only as an exception.
The only semantic units related to data of primitive types 'string' and 'number' are those which have literal representation in the life - words, names, codes, numbers, digits, signs, etc.
The only semantic units related to primitive, compiled functions, are those which represent some hardware device or some low-level software object from the operating system, for example a hard disk - the relation 'free space' is a relation to a function, which delivers the count of free bytes on a specific disk.
An example for a less semantic and a more semantic representation: synonyms of a word can be represented twofold: 1) as direct relations between the word and its synonyms; 2) or indirectly, via the denoted by the word semantic units. In second case, if the same or similar semantic units are denoted, the words are synonyms. The second case is much more semantic.
In a semantic system two attributes (relations) of semantic units are used - 'frequency of usage' and 'worth', which facilitate the system and the user to make a choice when there are lots of possibilities.
The knowledge in a semantic system is mostly common and objective, but is individualized by personal sets of 'frequencies of usage', 'values', 'good-bad', 'known-not known', etc.
An example for a less semantic and a more semantic representation: a relation between semantic units 'John' and 'Mary' can represent the fact that 'John loves Mary'. But this is superficial representation, syntactic-level representation. Deeply, closer to reality, and more semantic, is a representation by using a semantic unit 'emotional centre' as a part of the semantic unit 'John' and is it related to the semantic unit 'Mary'. In addition, the fact that 'John loves Mary' is expressed indirectly by presence of relatively bigger count of other relations between semantic units 'John' and 'Mary'.
Certainly, in a business system relations like 'loves' and semantic units like 'emotional centre' can be skipped.
Some artificial Intelligence themes I leave to rise out of the development of semantic technology.
The purposes of the semantic technology and the artificial intelligence do no match completely.
The semantic technology is an information technology, although it is intelligent and knowledge-based. It is orientated to the practice, brings advantages for those, who make use of it.
I'm fascinated by flexibility, richness and elegance of the natural languages. The contrast to sketchiness and narrowness of formal-procedural computer languages is remarkable. In addition, the texts of computer programs are so ugly! Flexibility of the natural languages - it is the possibility to combine words so that with a few words you can express much more real-world objects. Natural languages are suitable for communication with very complex systems, especially with the most complex system - the human! Richness of the natural languages - the language of every big nation today has tens and hundreds of thousands of words and word groups. The sentence - the main part of speech, is a wonderful means to tell something not known, something different, using just known words. I like it that there are many ways to tell one and the same thought. I like that a natural language uses generalizations, i.e. it organizes the concepts hierarchically in one system. I like that it directly denotes existing in the life things - cities, people, million things, including subjective states and experiences. There is nothing like this in computer pseudo-languages. I like that natural languages can work with different parts and aspects of the things - the abstraction. I like using gradations, for example: 'never' - 'very rarely' - 'rarely' - 'normal' - 'often' - 'very often' - 'always'. I like the use of relativity: a) toward the norm (with sign '+' or '-'), for example 'many', 'little'; b) toward a point, for example 'after two hours'; c) toward the quantity of same kind, for example 'more than', 'quicker than'; d) toward a part, for example 'front part', 'back part'; e) toward space and time, for example 'before', 'above', 'after'. I like the use of metaphors. I like using of multitudes, for example 'flock', 'Varna citizens'. I like the use of different degrees of definiteness, approximation and inexactness, for example 'here', 'there', 'about 500'. I like possibility to reference something/someone using a particular characteristic or aspect of it/him, for example 'you, fat man'. I like relations by analogy, similarity, for example 'he is like a dog'. I like the concentration in one word of huge amount of meaning - if you say for someone 'good', you have said the most important, details are unnecessary; the word 'freedom' still contains more value than the word 'money', no matter how much mercantile our days are.
The semantic information technology has all characteristic of the natural languages.
There are many software products for natural language texts translation. Some of them are better than others. But there are no programs for high quality computer translation. And it could not be, until computers start to understand texts, until computers start to work with the meaning of information, until information systems become semantic.
Understanding means relating the new information with the old knowledge.
Clearly, the semantic technology does not exclude achievements of current information technologies, as far as they are useful - all achievements in the interface - the work with a mouse, the menus, forms are included in the semantic technology, moreover they are included semantically, as semantic units.
I don't want to make an impression, that the simple tables with simple information, for example a table with columns 'name', 'price' and 'quantity', will disappear and will be replaced by big clumsy natural language texts. On the contrary, semantic means extending the diversity of instruments and forms of displaying, more flexible and intelligent switching from tool to tool, i.e. much more sensitive adaptation to needs of an individual user. So the simple tables, tree-like structures, etc., remain, but are included with semantic relations in the whole semantic system, they are one of the many kinds of semantic elements.
Some of the semantic units are dynamic, being a result of flow of activity to related semantic units and returning of a calculated value. This is the way mathematical formulae are represented.
An important feature of the semantic technology is the partial recognition, or recognition of not complete and erroneous information. This is especially important in text recognition where errors are unavoidable. To recognize a word with a wrong letter, with a missing letter or with swapped letters, the searching is performed not by words, but by letters. A word is recognized if it has the biggest part of recognized letters among all other words. Similarly is organised the recognition of all other elements - words, word groups, sentences, photographs, audio- and video-records.
Current information technologies with their simple data structures, their big amounts, but small diversity, show a lack of seriousness, show a lack of ambition, show a low state of the spirit and consciousness of their creators.
Computer programming languages (C, Java, Pascal, etc.) are languages under condition. Comparing them with true languages - Bulgarian, English and other, you see that C, Java and Pascal are extremely primitive sets of instructions, data types and functions, with context-free grammars, designed to stay primitive forever.
The knowledge is power. If computers could work with knowledge how productive and useful could be, making possible automation of the economy and freeing people from monotonous work.
The highest achievement of current information technologies in the human-computer communication is the graphical interface. The main element of graphical interface is the mouse. The mouse is moved by hand. How far is this form of communication from the highest form of communication - the speech (written or spoken).
The solvation of problems of Artificial intelligence - machine translation, speech recognition, machine vision, intelligent robots, etc. - is not possible in separation, without being a part or a manifestation of one all-including semantic system.
The traditional structures for knowledge representation in the field of Artificial intelligence (semantic sets, frames, rules, productions) are not good enough for the semantic technology - because they are specialized, or because they are not optimised enough to be useful in the practical life.
With confidence I am not the best artificial intelligence specialist, nor the best computer programmer, nor the best database specialist. But I think I'm the best combination of above-mentioned areas and as an effect I'm the best specialist in the implementation of the semantic technology in the practice.
Traditional information technologies are intended to process simple structured information, but of big volume.
The semantic technology can process both complex and big volume information.
My idea about semantic technology comes from many years of experience with databases and computer programming (especially from my frustration trying to make something which is not allowed by these technologies). My idea about semantic technology is not a result of book reading and dreaming.
Contemporary programming technologies demand detailed, full and exact description of the instruction sequence, even if the task is quite simple.
Current basic form of information in Internet (HTML-file) is more convenient for publishers, than for consumers. It is so because consumer's computers cannot read and understand the information automatically. It must be read by people, with their low speed of reading.
The complexity and diversity of industry products increases continuously; the number and percentage of higher educated people increases continuously, because the information gets more and more complicated. The share of expenditures for software increases continuously. But no share can increase endlessly - it will take 100 per cent, which is not possible. Therefore, unavoidably there will be a transition, a shift into an information technology that can process much and complex information with less human work and expenses.
The amount of information in social space doubles every 8 years. And inasmuch as prevailing forms of information are not suitable for automatic processing by computers, people have access to ever decreasing part of all information. Publishing becomes more and more senseless. Interests of both publishers and consumers impose a change of forms of the information, so that: 1) the coordination between deliverers increases; 2) information becomes accessible for automatic reading. That is the semantic form of information.
In 1989 Peter Drucker writes about the society of knowledge and workers with knowledge.
History facts impose a conclusion that book printing has changed the world. If there were no plenty of cheap books, the Enlightenment, the industrial production and modern times would not come. The computer is able to bring us yet another deep change. With adoption of the semantic information technology, urgent and unavoidable, the computer will bring us the automation of information processes - in industry, commerce, government, and law. People will direct his energy into personal development and creativity. They will do this, because the growing up and developing brings happiness, and creativity and development is the same.
If people have to learn something, they prefer it to be in the form of a story with subject and meaning, not in the form of a column with numbers. The column of numbers is the symbol of the old information technologies.
The image - this unity of diversity, is the symbol of the new semantic information technology. With the semantic information technology the synthesis becomes more important than the analysis.
The semantic information technology works with elements, not separated from the all-embracing entirety - the reality.
Whereas the traditional information technologies work with data, that already have no relation to the rest of things.
In his book "The Third wave" Alvin Toffler says that we are in the beginning of a new epoch of synthesis, that in all intellectual spheres we can see a turn into large-scale thinking, into general theory and seeking of relations between things. And that we can see more and more clearly that our maniacal staring at quantitative details without context heaps up more and more about less and less.
The easier way to make much money is to make something that no person has made before, to be first and to be pioneer. If you are not the first you will need to fight the competition, which is that much brutal that much big is the possible gain. The semantic technology has no competition yet and it is the way for you be first.
If the math were so important, we would be born with a calculator in our heads.
Think about what the contemporary computer information systems are, if a single company - General Motors uses more than 8000 different software products and information systems!
Everything I have done for the last 10 years was orientated to the creation of the semantic technology - the books I have been buying, reading and scanning; the information I have downloaded from Internet; the many subjects I interested in - mainly to understand how to model it semantically; jobs I have worked or sooner have not, wanting to have more time for the semantic technology.
While creating the artificial intelligence can wait, because there are many people with natural intelligence, the adoption of the semantic technology must happen as soon as possible, because the semantic technology interacts with and complements the human, it does not try to take the place of human nor competes him.
In principle I deny narrow themes, narrow specialization, little goals. I don't understand living as a function of the market and juncture, I don't understand living without aspiration for the highest, either in spiritual or in worldly aspect.
Those who want to understand what he is capable of doing, must have strongly desired goals, although far and hard to achieve. Achieving such goals brings the feeling of happiness. The smaller is the goal, the less is the joy when one achieves it.
The artificial intelligence was not able to take the place of the traditional information technologies because: 1) it competes in narrow, specific areas, where the ordinary software is stronger; 2) it has not thrown off the inheritance of mathematics (for example predicate calculus are not a real intellectual technology).
In the language the actions are represented by verbs. In the sentence the verbs relate the object and the subject of the action. So in the speech verbs are relations in most cases. But in a semantic system verbs are also semantic units that have relations to other semantic units. Their relations are of a kind: 'action performer', 'action recipient', 'tool', 'place', 'time', 'sub-action', 'co-action', etc.
The computer is in the beginning of its life cycle. It has not yet reached its full potential. So there is much to happen like advent of new generations of computer information technologies.
I suppose that Douglas Lenat opposes the "common sense" to detached from the life theoretical works of artificial intelligence. It is a good purpose, but his works are not pragmatic enough, not as much as the semantic technology is.
The semantic technology lays in the basement of an information system which includes not only discursive logic and inference rules, but also the financial report of "X" company, the list of the employees of "Y" company, and so on.
Today software development is not only expensive and long lasting process, but also a process in which the errors are unavoidable. It is hard to find out the errors in current software. Some errors exist long years, jumping from version to version!
The semantic orientation haunts in the air. The people from Lazysoft Company throw off the outdated relational databases, replacing it with a more semantic solution - The Associative Model of Data.
Even in the old relational databases semanticity is encouraged - there the so-called normalization is used, which is very important for the quality of the database. In fact, the normalization is a requirement for more semantics!
For specialists in informatics the semantic technology opens a great opportunity to grow professionally. The intellectual challenge is much bigger than in traditional computer programming or database developing. This is an essential symptom showing that the computer programming is already old - the fact that it is an industry already many years. For long time there is no place for creativity and personal attitude to the subject of programmer's work. Every programmer is just one among many links of a conveyor, and not the programmer creates the software product, but the conveyor. In short, if you are a programmer, you are just an impersonal little wheel, unconsciously following someone's directions and charts, and turning in routine cycles.
The basic information unit in traditional information technology is the file. Non-semanticity and the defect of the file comes from the fact, that the knowledge about the structures of data is spread in different programs, and the sense of data is in the heads of the programmers, who created that file.
Reckoning what is normal and what is not is very important for the semantic technology. In many scales the point 'norm' could be replaced by 'perfection'! For example in the scale 'thin' - 'thick'.
Within the bounds of non-semantic information technologies I have always chosen a decision as semantic as possible. In 1985-88, after I had experience with BASIC, dBASE and Turbo Pascal, the most favoured programming language for me was Smalltalk - a language with more semantics in its hierarchic organization of the data classes and use of objects. Also when working with databases I always applied the rules for normalization of tables, but note I did it intuitively, because I have never read them entirely - they sound to me so unnecessary. Instead, I have always been striving for maximum semanticity trying to build the tables as close to reality as possible.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it, says Allan Key.
Contemporary information technologies are split into many separated software programs. Every software product is specialized to do something; there are no semantic relations between different ones, and the formal-functional relations are not satisfactory enough.
The development in nature is from more simple to more complex, from lower to higher, from primitive to perfect. The development in information technologies is from mathematic-logical-formal to semantic.
Let's compare non-semantic information technologies and the semantic information technology. If you keep your texts in files with types .DOC, .TXT, .HTML, .PDF, you will not be able to do the following: to change the whole or part of a text in gender, number, article, tense, voice, etc., according to type of words, without losing the grammatical concordance; to change the style of the text to adapt it to understanding and requirements of different audiences; to tell the computer to complete the writing of a text; to extract a summary; to write out some text in arbitrary language, etc.
A big, diversified company needs the semantic organization of his information more then a local food shop, but if all enterprises, including the owner of the local shop, take part in the semantic agreement, then the society has substantially new business and social information environment.
The semantic units are divided into common and single, common simple ('human') and common assembled ('flock'), concrete ('human') and abstract ('form'), positive ('learned') and negative ('illiterate'), non-relative ('human') and correlative ('father and son'), notions and images, etc.
The semantic technology is not orientated toward some kind of elite - scientific, technological or political, on the contrary, it gives advantage to every person who works with information, uses computer and Internet.
Today becomes rich that person who gives even a little, but to many people, not the person, who gives much, but to small number of people.
The correlation between the traditional information technology and the semantic information technology is the same as between a fragmented, superficial thinking and a systematic, profound thinking.
The deepest semanticity is achievable by putting the human in the base of a semantic system (anthropocentrism).
The knowledge can be represented twofold - statically, as it is in a printed book, or dynamically, through functioning models of the object of knowledge (i.e. semantic elements), as it is in a semantic system.
Part of the words are operators and do not mean an object from the real world - 'and', 'or', 'in', 'on', 'behind', 'am', 'because', 'although', etc.
The place of every nation between the other is determined by its contribution for their prosperity. If Bulgaria accepts the semantic technology as a strategic direction, there is a serious chance for improvement of Bulgaria's position among other countries.
The semantic technology allows as much definitions of every thing and phenomenon as much contexts there are. There can be a definition of a company in the context of a person, second definition in the context of a state, third definition in the context of a culture, fourth definition in the context of a speech, etc. By 'definition' I understand one or another set of relations of the semantic unit.
In a semantic system every semantic element acquires his sense from his relations and interactions with other semantic elements.
The abstraction in the semantic systems allows a transfer of experience from a known into an unknown element, provided that new element has enough common characteristics with the old. This abolishes the necessity to describe in details every new element.
The semantic technology is a radical rupture with sequential execution, cycles, branches, variables, data types, functions, and to some degree with files (in a semantic operation system the rupture is full).
To be a good programmer all you need is good formal-logical thinking.
To be a good creator of semantic systems you need to know deeply the things.
I cannot be satisfied with something less than implementation of the semantic technology.
Few people become rich without having the ability to think big, says R. Shaffer.
Who flies high, sees far away.
The ideas are the beginning of everything; they are the most powerful motor of the world.
My plan for the future of the information technologies, presented here, is better than Microsoft's. The quality of the vision of the future does not depend on present market success. My plan is better because gives bigger possibilities to more people for longer time.
Let's imagine how both - the new and the old technologies treat the information:
In the semantic technology some specific text or fact is infused, weaved and integrated into the united picture of the world.
In the old technologies some specific text or fact is placed in a folder and stays there side by side with other texts and facts, waiting to be processed by some program.
Every semantic system is a net. Internet is a net too. Net is also the structure of the society from near and more distant future.
On the contrary, the traditional society and the traditional information technologies are based on hierarchy.
My hostility towards sciences is conversely proportional to their semanticity. Most unpleasant to me are mathematics and formal logic, then comes physics, etc.
The semantic technology in particular means: every object, building, animal, human can be found by its space and time location. This is a very simple possibility, due to the semantic organization of the information. In Internet and in all the information technologies there is no space and time! While writing this I feel the absurd of developing information systems which have no time and space.
To show the advantages of the semantic technology, the semantic systems must reach some critical mass, must become big enough.
When included in a semantic system, the formal objects and relations of the mathematics, programming and others, become semantic too.
An semantic system is covering, supreme, i.e. includes all the functions of a database, of a database management system, of a programming language, of a programming environment. The Semantic Web is a small subset of the Global semantic system.
An information system is semantic if it is open for endless semantic growing.
The strength of the relation is of big importance. For example, Hungary is 100 per cent in Central Europe, whereas Romania is a central-european country less than 50 per cents.
The semantic technology is more appropriate for multilingual Europe than for English-speaking United States.
I appeal for more relentless entering the future. The good things are there. In the past and the present there are only scraps.
12-25 December 2002
Georgi Y. Dimitrov
Varna