I think Rich is talking more about data structures than data abstractions here. In particular, he's saying that he favors sound data models (RDF, datalog, relational) to manipulate information in our programs over specific data structures.

To me it is related to Alan Perlis's saying on the power you get from uniformity:

"It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures."

I totally agree with him on this point and I also agree that for some of us a lot of our programs are about manipulating static information structures. But let's not reduce programming to that.