This article was published as The dilated triple. Marko A. Rodriguez, Alberto Pepe, Joshua Shinavier. In: Emergent Web Intelligence: Advanced Semantic Technologies, Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing series, Pages 3-16, ISBN:978-1-84996-076-2, Springer-Verlag. 2010.
Abstract. 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 very simple foundation that the rich, complex knowledge structures of the Semantic Web are built. Yet the very expressivness of RDF, by inviting comparison with real-world knowledge, highlights a fundamental shortcoming of RDF: that it is limited to statements of absolute fact, in contrast to the thoroughly context-sensitive nature of human thought. However, when a statement is interpreted from beyond the scope of its local graph representation, other statements augment its meaning and identify its uniqueness. Following this line of thought, a model is presented in which each statement in an RDF graph is supplemented by some subjectively related subgraph of the same RDF graph, thereby framing the meaning of the statement within a broader context.