# Giant Global Graph and FOAF
**URL:** https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106
**Category:** Architecture
**Created:** [April 11, 2022, 5:38pm UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106 "2022-04-11T17:38:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@alanhkarp](https://community.spritely.institute/u/alanhkarp)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2022, 5:38pm UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106/1 "2022-04-11T17:38:31Z")
Are you guys familiar with the [Giant Global Graph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Global_Graph) and [FOAF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(ontology))? They seem relevant to Spritley although not central.
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### Author:  [@alanhkarp](https://community.spritely.institute/u/alanhkarp)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2022, 8:04pm UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106/2 "2022-04-11T20:04:27Z")
[Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays](https://github.com/fiatjaf/nostr) (nostr) is another project with some things similar to Spritely’s. I’ve been communicating with Melvin Carvalho, who is involved in the project.
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### Author:  [@cwebber](https://community.spritely.institute/u/cwebber)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2022, 6:25pm UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106/3 "2022-04-13T18:25:37Z")
I think they’re related but part of the challenge is that most of the semantic web vision didn’t put in enough emphasis on contextualization and that… well, there might be a global graph (there is one, given that the universe itself is a graph), but that doesn’t mean there’s global access, or that there’s a global sense of truth. There’s simultaneously huge amounts of value from the semantic web / linked data world but it kind of also ties into this former vision of the web as everything being public, and not enough of a tie-in of mutual suspicion. I believe these ideas can be woven in, but boath FOAF and the Giant Global Graph feel like they come from another era, where we didn’t see the dangers of dropping context. Still pieces that can be useful and adopted though.
Maybe that’s too harsh. Dunno.
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### Author:  [@alanhkarp](https://community.spritely.institute/u/alanhkarp)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2022, 6:47pm UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106/4 "2022-04-13T18:47:19Z")
Not too harsh to my thinking. I’m not a fan of semantic web. Proponents have been saying forever that It will solve all the world’s problems once they add one more feature." I think that the big problem is the assumption of a global ontology.
The distributed social graph is something that can be useful and work with mutual suspicion. I also think the FOAF concept, with JSON instead of RDF, can be a way to bootstrap connections. However, in both cases I would recommend community-based ontologies rather than a global one.
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### Author:  [@bengo](https://community.spritely.institute/u/bengo)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2022, 11:14pm UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106/5 "2022-05-17T23:14:36Z")
> [@alanhkarp](#):
>
> I think that the big problem is the assumption of a global ontology.
Can you link to that assumption? I never picked up on it.
> [@cwebber](#):
>
> well, there might be a global graph (there is one, given that the universe itself is a graph), but that doesn’t mean there’s global access, or that there’s a global sense of truth.
personally I don’t expect there will ever be such a thing, nor that there should be.
But yes, I do agree that its valid to say that the universe it itself a graph. As a corollary I think context is never created on-write, but only on-read via [Observation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_(quantum_physics)) from a particular [frame-of-reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_reference_frame), which is when ‘context’ is applied and all the superposition collapses (i.e. context collapse).
Similarly, with GGG (which honestly I haven’t encountered much as a term), I think there are similarities. On it’s own… it’s not that useful… it’s just _everything_. But with good tools for observation from a specific frame of reference (context), specific utility is possible. It seems like quite a powerful opportunity to be among the first widely usable tools for observation of GGG, like it could influence what 7 billion people observe as reality.
More on the quantum information physics stuff:
- [Wolfram Physics Project | A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/)
- [Integrated information theory - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory)
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### Author:  [@abrahampalmer](https://community.spritely.institute/u/abrahampalmer)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2023, 10:36am UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106/6 "2023-05-03T10:36:46Z")
I’m new to discovering Spritely and nostr, but had wondered if I couldn’t use [Nip-04](Encrypted Direct Message) and a judicious use of relays to hack it as an application transport/storage layer. This assumes that it’s public/private keypair signing and encryption is functional enough. Capabilities then would be granted for an individual/agent by creating new keypairs with any associated encrypted messages. If I understand the other comments, the problem with nostr is that it doesn’t partition things at all and so you would have to be judicious about how you use the relays and encryption to not create a big public mess.
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### Author:  [@zarutian](https://community.spritely.institute/u/zarutian)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2023, 9:23pm UTC](https://community.spritely.institute/t/giant-global-graph-and-foaf/106/7 "2023-05-07T21:23:06Z")
Saw [Nym](http://nymtech.net/) recently and been mulling over how to ocapn/captp/waterken-comms stuff over it.