Thinking on the Web: Berners-Lee, Gödel and Turing [Paperback]

H. Peter Alesso (Author), Craig F. Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 3, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0471768669 | ISBN-13: 978-0471768661

What Is Thinking?

What is Turing's Test? What is Gödel's Undecidability Theorem? How is Berners-Lee's Semantic Web logic going to overcome paradoxes and complexity to produce machine processing on the Web?

Thinking on the Web draws from the contributions of Tim Berners-Lee (What is solvable on the Web?), Kurt Gödel (What is decidable?), and Alan Turing (What is machine intelligence?) to evaluate how much "intelligence" can be projected onto the Web.

The authors offer both abstract and practical perspectives to delineate the opportunities and challenges of a "smarter" Web through a threaded series of vignettes and a thorough review of Semantic Web development.

Editorial Reviews

Review

?Anyone with experience of HCI will want to read this book which after all, has provided a new and entirely different way of providing a stimulus to a subject that is very much in need of direction.? (Kybernetes, 2009)

"Thinking on the Web offers a fascinating history and impressive background of the age we are living through, and serves as a tribute to three great minds. A true geek bonus is the depth of coverage, with rich explanations, examples, and a look at next generation web services." (Blogcritics.org, March 9, 2009)

From the Back Cover

What Is Thinking?

What is Turing's Test? What is Gödel's Undecidability Theorem? How is Berners-Lee's Semantic Web logic going to overcome paradoxes and complexity to produce machine processing on the Web?

Thinking on the Web draws from the contributions of Tim Berners-Lee (What is solvable on the Web?), Kurt Gödel (What is decidable?), and Alan Turing (What is machine intelligence?) to evaluate how much "intelligence" can be projected onto the Web.

The authors offer both abstract and practical perspectives to delineate the opportunities and challenges of a "smarter" Web through a threaded series of vignettes and a thorough review of Semantic Web development.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Interscience (December 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471768669
• ISBN-13: 978-0471768661
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.6 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #712,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

H. Peter Alesso is a technology innovator with twenty years research experience at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). As Engineering Group Leader at LLNL he led a team of computer scientists and engineers in innovative applications across a wide range of supercomputers, workstations and networks. He has an M.S. and an advanced Engineering Degree from M.I.T. He has published several software titles and numerous scientific journal and conference articles and he is the author/co-author of five books. (Website www.hpeteralesso.com)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Machine Intelligence presented intelligently, April 8, 2009

By 

V. Gonzales (Mays Landing, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thinking on the Web: Berners-Lee, Gödel and Turing (Paperback)

I liked this book. It actually had three distinctive features: First, the general presentation of the pioneers Berners-Lee, Godel and Turing with the key questions they posed was well done. Second, the chapters on ontology engineering, RDF, and OWL were instructive and had good examples. I found the chapters on semantic search and semantic services particularly interesting. Third, the interludes consisted of several pages of debate in-between chapters.

I particularly enjoyed the interludes - these short debates between two fictitious characters crystallized many issues dealing with AI, thinking and intelligence as they emerged from the chapter material. They were presented with humor and high spirits, but the arguments seemed well-founded and balanced. They included amusing backdrops, such as, the characters playing a chess match while discussing the tournament between Gary Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue computer