Computer Science for Development

TY - JOUR

T1 - Computer Science for Development

AU - Guéret, Christophe

N1 - Contribution to a Report from Dagstuhl Seminar 14381 on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (September 14 – 19, 2014). Edited by Artur d’Avila Garcez, Marco Gori, Pascal Hitzler, and Luís C. Lamb

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - Data sharing usually focuses on centralized and very powerful solutions centred around Web hosted servers and (mobile) clients accessing it. As a direct consequence, the usage of Linked Data technology depends on the availability of a Web infrastructure compassing data-centres, high speed reliable Internet connection and modern client devices. If any of this is missing, our community is not able, yet, to provide any Linked Data enabled data management solution. Still, the digital divide that is currently widely recognized separates the world into those who have access to Web-based platforms and those who don’t. When designing Linked Data platforms we tend to forget those 4 Billion persons who don’t have access to Internet but would benefit from being able to share structured data. We should keep everyone in mind when we design Linked Data platforms and aim at helping to reduce this digital divide. We believe that achieving this goal implies working on three aspects (Infrastructure, Interfaces and Relevancy) around open data.This problem the Semantic Web community faces doing knowledge representation in developing countries is only one facet of Computer Science. Many other aspects of it are also concerned. For instance, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) need to account for users that don’t read or write or don’t speak any “common” language, Engineering need to be performed on smaller scale devices with sparse networkings and Information retrieval need to be done with a focus on locally relevant information. These many aspects of Computer Sciences affected by the specific challenges posed by using ICT in the developing world call for a global study over CS4D where researchers would join in ensuring the technology theywork on is inclusive and usable by everyone world wide.

AB - Data sharing usually focuses on centralized and very powerful solutions centred around Web hosted servers and (mobile) clients accessing it. As a direct consequence, the usage of Linked Data technology depends on the availability of a Web infrastructure compassing data-centres, high speed reliable Internet connection and modern client devices. If any of this is missing, our community is not able, yet, to provide any Linked Data enabled data management solution. Still, the digital divide that is currently widely recognized separates the world into those who have access to Web-based platforms and those who don’t. When designing Linked Data platforms we tend to forget those 4 Billion persons who don’t have access to Internet but would benefit from being able to share structured data. We should keep everyone in mind when we design Linked Data platforms and aim at helping to reduce this digital divide. We believe that achieving this goal implies working on three aspects (Infrastructure, Interfaces and Relevancy) around open data.This problem the Semantic Web community faces doing knowledge representation in developing countries is only one facet of Computer Science. Many other aspects of it are also concerned. For instance, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) need to account for users that don’t read or write or don’t speak any “common” language, Engineering need to be performed on smaller scale devices with sparse networkings and Information retrieval need to be done with a focus on locally relevant information. These many aspects of Computer Sciences affected by the specific challenges posed by using ICT in the developing world call for a global study over CS4D where researchers would join in ensuring the technology theywork on is inclusive and usable by everyone world wide.

M3 - Article

SN - 2192-5283

VL - 4

SP - 66

EP - 66

JO - Dagstuhl Reports

JF - Dagstuhl Reports

IS - 9

T2 - Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (Dagstuhl Seminar 14381)

Y2 - 14 September 2014 through 19 September 2014

ER -