Delving into the Details of Obama’s Speech

By SemanticWeb.com on January 21, 2009 1:21 PM

Jennifer Zaino
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

So, did newly inaugurated President Barack Obama say that “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors the prosperous” or “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous”? It’s a small word that makes a big difference, and it’s causing commentary on the blogosphere, on TV, and in the papers.

Thanks to semantic web technologies, you can find out pretty quickly. Delve Networks, the developer of a semantically
enabled and speech-recognition-savvy video search platform, has up on its blog the video of the inaugural speech that you can search for yourself to get the answer. Type in “prosper” or “prosperous” and look for the red bars in the heat map that shows up — he mentioned versions of the word “prosper” a couple of times, so you’ll have a couple of choices — and click on them to find out. (Or I can just tell you: he said “only the prosperous.”)

One issue to note, though, is that you won’t necessarily get more accurate results by typing in the complete phrase: Typing in “when it favors only the prosperous,” for example, pulls up a number of heat spots that are suggested as highly relevant — one of which is the right match — but also others that feature just one or a couple of words in the search phrase.

It’s a bit addicting to play around with this, even if you might not catch every instance you’re looking for. Want to listen again to the first-ever time a president has used the word “Muslim” in an inauguration speech? You’ll be jumped right to the part where he makes a direct address, due to the semantic technology behind the platform: “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward…”, though that search doesn’t turn up his reference to the United States being a nation of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. Another caveat here is not to try the less common, alternate spelling of the word “Moslem.” You’ll get a “No results found” response. Still, it’s easier searching this way than cutting and pasting a version of the transcript into a document for a keyword search.

You can easily search for concepts related to a term, even if the term itself doesn’t show up at a particular point. Search under “war,” for example, and you’ll get Obama’s direct references to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also you’ll be given the option to click on “somewhat relevant” sections of the speech that have some relationship to that concept, which may be directly connected or its complete opposite. As an example,you can click on a hot spot to hear him discuss America’s role in the world in ushering in a new era of peace. (Speaking of related concepts, I didn’t really expect a search on “Corinthians,” hoping to pull up Obama’s use of the biblical line “to set aside childish things,” would indeed turn up that phrase. However, neither did a search on “childish” or “set aside.”)

One last hint for semantic web technologists and the general IT and scientific population at large: If you’re in search of Obama’s thoughts on science and technology, don’t search under either term. I wound up searching the word “restore” to find his comments on restoring science to its rightful place and wielding technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its costs. Maybe not perfect, but good fun nonetheless.

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