The Dilated Triple

The basic unit of meaning on the Semantic Web is the RDF statement, or triple, which combines a distinct subject, predicate and object to make a definite assertion about the world. A set of triples constitutes a graph, to which they give a collective meaning. It is upon this simple foundation that the rich, complex knowledge structures of the Semantic Web are built. Yet the very expressiveness of RDF, by inviting comparison with real-world knowledge, highlights a fundamental shortcoming, in that RDF is limited to statements of absolute fact, independent of the context in which a statement is asserted. This is in stark contrast with the thoroughly context-sensitive nature of human thought. The model presented here provides a particularly simple means of contextualizing an RDF triple by associating it with related statements in the same graph. This approach, in combination with a notion of graph similarity, is sufficient to select only those statements from an RDF graph which are subjectively most relevant to the context of the requesting process. Rodriguez, M.A., Pepe, A., Shinavier, J., “The Dilated Triple,” Emergent Web Intelligence: Advanced Semantic Technologies, Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing series, eds. R. Chbeir, A. Hassanien, A. Abraham, and Y. Badr, Springer-Verlag, pages 3-16, ISBN:978-1-84996-076-2, June 2010. Marko A. Rodriguez T-5, Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, e-mail: [email protected] Alberto Pepe Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, University of California at Los Angeles, e-mail: [email protected] Joshua Shinavier Tetherless World Constellation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute e-mail: [email protected] 1 ar X iv :1 00 6. 10 80 v1 [ cs .A I] 6 J un 2 01 0 2 Marko A. Rodriguez, Alberto Pepe, and Joshua Shinavier