The impact of semantic handshakes

Abstract

One of the key challenges for the breaking through of the semantic web or web 2.0 is global semantic integration: if two proxies in different subject-centric models represent the same subject in the "real world" they should become mergeable. The common top-down approach to semantic integration is the enforcement of centralised ontologies, vocabularies or PSI repositories. This top-down approach bases on an overly optimistic premise: the success of one universal vocabulary enforced by a central authority. This paper proposes a bottom-up approach. A semantic handshake is the decision that two terms from different vocabularies can be used to identify the same subject. If these local decisions are broadcasted, global integration can be achieved without any ontological imperialism. Within this paper this hypothesis is investigated by simulations. We show that if the majority of proxies describes its identity only by two different public known terms, global integration is almost achievable at the large scale. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.