Getting my head round the semantic web

A big part of what will determine whether HayleyWorld will work for readers will be how effectively I use keywords to sort and order the edited quotations from William Hayley's Memoirs that I've entered into my research database, and which I'm using as the core narrative(s).

At the moment, along with details of the volume and page numbers in the Memoirs from which each extract is taken, and, where appropriate the date(s) on which they happened, I have three sets/fields of keywords, which I've labelled –

• "cast" ~  the people who are mentioned or referred to in the extract, or who are present at a specific event
• "place" ~ places mentioned or referred to in the extract

and

• "keyword" ~ which should, really, be called "subject", but keyword is what I called it when I originally created the database in the late 1990s as a research repository rather than a writing tool. This last field contains word lists describing what the extract is about. So, for example, an extract about mental health issues – one of Hayley's main interests – generally include the descriptors "mental illness", "depression", "melancholy" and "madness", but may also be found alongside "sensibility", "spirits" and other words that Hayley and his circle often used/which contemporary commentators use in writing on the subject.

But – how does this all relate to the semantic web? And why am I trying to get my head around it?

Because my database is (well, sort of) a primitive take on the tools and methods developed to create the semantic web. And understanding how "ontologies" (essentially sets and hierarchies of keywords) are constructed and connected should enable me to make HayleyWorld a better, more effective thing.

So, I have bought a book – Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist by Dean Allemang and Jim Hendler – recommended by Andrew Hugill, Director of the Centre for Creative Computing at Bath Spa University.

But here's the rub. Despite my lifelong love of books, I have never managed to finish reading a technical one. At each atttempt, I've run out of brain long before I've run out of pages.

So, this time, I've decided to blog about each chapter as I read it. I'm hoping this will carry me through/enable me properly understand/internalise the concepts and information I encounter. I'm aiming to do one chapter a week, but make no promises. Other priorities may intervene. And I may run out of brain as fast as usual. But I'm gonna try.

Wish me luck…

Reader journeys

One of the most difficult aspects of making HayleyWorld to get my head round has been imagining and designing the possible reader journeys through the text. How can we (my development partner & I)

• personalise a reader's journey while still retaining an element of control?
• make sure that readers can take different paths through the narrative and still read/experience something that feels like a coherent narrative?
• make readers feel like they're getting to know William Hayley in a away that mimics encountering him in real life?

I'm still near the start of the reader journey design process, but I have a start point that Contentment are in the process of implementing for our first prototype (which should be ready within the next couple of weeks).

At the moment, the idea looks like this:

As you can see, I still have questions about how much content to deliver before giving readers a chance to either choose more, or move on to another topic. But how will they get there in the first place?

It took me a while to work out how the app should start. But then I realised that it should begin in the way that William Hayley characteristically began his relationships with friends.

So, I embarked on my first element of semi-fictionalisation. I edited together – mostly from phrases/lines Hayley actually used, but with a few of my own (mostly obvious) tweaks  – a Hayleyan letter and sonnet, addressed to the reader…

"The past

Sussex

My dear Friend

Please allow me the liberty of addressing you thus as, I believe I have reason to hope, such you will soon become. Having some important Topics I wish to share with you, I have thrown them into here, and entreat your acceptance of the following history, that you may peruse at the greatest Ease to yourself.

Before you begin, I would beg you to look on my peculiarities with affectionate indulgence and I hope only that what follows may be thought worthy of you to whom I have taken the liberty of addressing it.

Ever your affectionate

WHayley

SONNET

Kind Friend! who reads in far off future years,

I pray thy generous heart will care to know,

A poet who lov’d to laugh yet oft shed tears

And wishes this – his story – to bestow.

Accept this volume:- through these pages flow

Sincere effusions of a long-passed mind!

Herein the untold truths my heart will shew,

Of artists, poets, friends and loves combin'd!

In this fair copy may thy eyes discern

The turns of mortal life herein outlin'd:

Whate'er the lessons from these words we learn

May all their blessings in you be entwin’d!

Thine be that joy which Friendship's bosom fills;

And thine eternal peace, devoid of ills!"

 That's the beginning that every reader will see. But then how to set each one off on their particular journey?

My initial plan was to give them a long form at the beginning. But my research into how people develop and sustain relationships led me to realise that this would be wrong. I need to create the illusion of conversation, which has two main implications.

• the reader needs to be asked for smaller tranches of information about themselves at various (but not too many) points in the app
• to have any chance of creating and sustaining the illusion that readers are getting to know William Hayley, they couldn't just be given a series of impersonal forms to complete. He would need to ask them questions. And would need to do so in an entirely Hayleyan manner…

So I wrote this. It is, I think, is more fun than an impersonal form, and has the advantage of allowing for "conversation" between Hayley and the reader without the reader being able to ask the sort of questions that an app will be unable to answer…

Also, given that the act of exploring HayleyWorld means readers are taking an interest in William Hayley, isn't it only right and proper that he should show an interest in them?

A "zoeography"?

As well as building HayleyWorld itself, my PhD in Digital Writing by Practice requires me to write a 20,000-word "critical component". One chapter of this explores the theory and history of biography.

In one of the books I was reading for research purposes I found this:

Greek, unlike English, Latin, and many other languages, has not one, but two different words for life: bios, but also zoe. The latter denotes vital energy, either natural or physical or—in Christian authors—spiritual and divine, that is, the quality of being alive; as for bios, it means rather mode of life, manner of living, often what we name ‘conduct’ or ‘behaviour’.

(Sergei S Averintsev in Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography edited by Peter France and William St Clair.)

One of the most heated debates in biographical/life-writing theory concerns how much – if any – "novelistic" imagination can and should be applied in the making of texts that readers expect to be factual. As a non-fiction writer, my sympathies sit most comfortably at the "none or as little as possible" end of the spectrum.

I came across Averintsev's comment just as I'd started to feel a little uncomfortable describing what I was making as a "biography". Whilst all the information in it would be (as far as possible) factual and accurate, the conceit behind it – that the reader would "get to know" someone who'd been dead for almost 200 years as if they were getting to know him in real life – introduced an obvious element of fiction.

So, as it's going to be a new form of biography anyway, and because I can (after all, the word isn't being used for any other purpose), I've decided to call it a zoeography.

Something that is true to the energy, the particular individual qualities of the life it tells – in this case William Hayley's – but which includes an element of fictionalisation – in this case, in the manner of its telling.

So, what's new about it?

Although reading a book about someone can be an excellent way of getting to know about them, it’s not like getting to know them. The ways we impart and receive information during interpersonal contact are radically different from the ways we absorb stories from books. The order of information sharing, what is given and withheld at any particular moment, how much the sharer reveals about any particular event, what happened, how they feel, their degree of honesty, and so on, vary, depending on all kinds of factors, including why and how people meet, how much time they spend together, how much they like each other – and in which kind of way. If people were books, they would be a different book for each individual they formed a relationship with.

And that's how I want to make HayleyWorld. As a different experience for every reader, based on their individual interests and interactions with the app. This means that I need to break down each story/event in William Hayley's life into a "nugget" of information, write each significant nugget in tow or three ways, with varying levels of detail and emotional content, so that Hayley "tells you" the story in a way that's appropriate to how well you've got to know each other.

So, yes, readers will be asked to enter some information about themselves. Their journey through William Hayley's life and storyworld will be determined partly by their choices and partly by other triggers including chronological date, the amount of time they've spent in his company and what William Hayley "wants" to tell them about…

Making that work isn't going to be easy. There are certain aspects of the process – particularly ensuring that the various nuggets link up every which way into different, but equally satisfying, narratives – that will be exceptionally challenging

HayleyWorld will be built as an app for tablets and smartphones, using Padify, and – thanks to Michael Kowalski – with help from Contentment's team of developers.

Hello & welcome

… to Making HayleyWorld, which will feature

• snippets from my research into William Hayley (1745-1820)
• info on my progress transforming my research into a new kind of biography, or zoeography
• related stuff
• unrelated stuff when I'm distracted by other things I have – or want – to do.

Expect 18th century gossip, comedy, tragedy, marital discord, madness, dubious medical interventions and some mediocre poetry alongside the occasional disquisition on creative and technological choices and processes.

Hope you enjoy it - and please talk to me through Twitter or via my website.

Incidentally, you may also like William Hayley's tweets (I help him with those).