computer science

Giant Global Graph

Giant Global Graph is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Giant Global Graph rather than just read about it. In short: Giant Global Graph (GGG) is a name coined in 2007 by Tim Berners-Lee to help distinguish between the nature and significance of the content on the existing World Wide Web and that of a promulgated next-generation web, presumptively named Web 3.0. In common usage, "World Wide Web" refers primarily to a web of discrete information objects readable by human beings, with functional linkages provided between them by huma…

Key takeaways

Giant Global Graph belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Giant Global Graph to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Giant Global Graph from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Giant Global Graph (GGG) is a name coined in 2007 by Tim Berners-Lee to help distinguish between the nature and significance of the content on the existing World Wide Web and that of a promulgated next-generation web, presumptively named Web 3.0. In common usage, "World Wide Web" refers primarily to a web of discrete information objects readable by human beings, with functional linkages provided between them by human-created hyperlinks. Next-generation Web 3.0 information designs go beyond the discrete web pages of previous generations by emphasizing the metadata which describe information objects like web pages and attribute the relationships that conceptually or semantically link the information objects to each other. Additionally, Web 3.0 technologies and designs enable the organization of entirely new kinds of human- and machine-created data objects. An important related concept that overlaps with Giant Global Graph without fully encompassing it is that of the Semantic Web. Social networking services are one of the earliest and best-known examples of this distinction. In a Social Network, the information about relationships between people, and the kinds of data objects those people share, is at least as important as the data objects themselves. Plus, participants in a Social Network create new kinds of data that did not exist on the web before, such as their Likes for other people's comments and content. Currently, these new kinds of data are primarily structured and mediated by the proprietary systems of companies like Facebook. In the ideal future of the decentralized Giant Global Graph or Semantic Web, such information would be structured in such a way that it could be readable by many different systems and dynamically organized into many different user-readable formats. The GGG concept also relates to the Decentralization of Internet Information, whereby properly-formatted semantic web data objects can be organized and their relationships discerned by any computer on the Internet, rather than solely being organized by large centralized systems such as Facebook and Google. For instance, people using the FOAF protocol to organize information on websites or other Internet nodes can define and interact with their social networks without necessarily requiring the intervention of centralized systems like Facebook. Crucially, where the term Web 3.0 refers to a suite of technologies and to a particular phase in the development of the web, the term Giant Global Graph is intended to refer more generally to the total environment of information that will be generated and sustained through the implementation of these technologies. This environment will be a qualitatively different one than that which existed before the development of these technologies. As of 2017, anticipated progress toward a pervasive semantic web has been side-tracked by the widespread application of machine learning technologies to process existing, unstructured data and content, and that it is no longer clear whether a Web 3.0 epoch will materialize as originally envisioned.

History The term Giant Global Graph was notably used the first time by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, on his blog. Tim Berners-Lee thinks about the social network itself that is inside and between social-network Web sites such as Facebook. He assumes that people can use the word "Graph" to distinguish these from the "Web". Then he says that, although he called this graph the Semantic Web, maybe it should have been called the "Giant Global Graph". "GGG" has been used several times by Berners-Lee and by others in other blogs. GGG may be described as the content plus pointers of the WWW transitioning to content plus pointers plus relationships plus descriptions. Significantly, the Giant Global Graph concept seems to have been a significant input in Facebook's concept and name for their "Open Graph" project and protocol, which is their effort to spread their approach to social networking beyond the bounds of the Facebook website, allowing a broader network or "graph" of connections between Facebook users, and between Facebook users and the Internet data objects which interest them.

See also peer-to-peer distributed system

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Giant Global Graph

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Giant Global Graph claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Giant Global Graph before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Giant Global Graph ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Giant Global Graph

In research: Giant Global Graph appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Giant Global Graph in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Giant Global Graph is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2007 neologisms, Semantic Web, Social networks, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Giant Global Graph outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Giant Global Graph in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Giant Global Graph means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Giant Global Graph out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Giant Global Graph in simple terms?

Why does Giant Global Graph matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Giant Global Graph?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Giant Global Graph.