The J.R.R. Tolkien of the Web

rhwalker22 writes "In a column titled "Lord of the Webs," The Washington Post's Leslie Walker looks at Tim Berners-Lee ("the J.R.R. Tolkien of the computer world") and the Semantic Web project. Berners-Lee was in Washington recently to tout the project: 'In his futuristic scenario, the Semantic Web offers controlled access to American health care data, plus databases charting the location and status of rivers, underground water, forests and local vegetation, along with economic data on local industries and what they produce -- all marked up in special vocabularies. Those allow scientists to run global queries across the Web, fishing randomly for correlations that might exist between where the sick people lived, worked and played -- such as a polluted stream or industrial dump.'" See an older article on the Semantic Web.

Comments

This just in..

[kahei]

SEMANTIC WEB 'NOT HERE YET' SHOCK!

Experts across the globe were unanimous today in agreeing that the Semantic Web hasn't happened yet and almost certainly never will, and that nobody would care or notice even if by some miracle it did.

"It's a wonder how this thing has remained vaporware for so long," said one analyst. "Normally, vaporware must actually offer something useful to maintain interest, but the SW just offers mindbogglingly abstruse XML schemas which nobody has any desire to even look at. Maybe that's their whole secret."

Political commentators were equally impressed by the achievement. "There's not much Saddam and I agree on," noted President George W Bush as he thumbed through a copy of the Iliad in the original Greek, "but a total and complete lack of interest in the Semantic Web is surely common ground between all of Mankind."

Biologists studying the few Semantic Web Evangelists known to exist are baffled by their hardy perseverance. The creatures seem able to struggle forever, for nebulous and rather silly goals, in the absence of any kind of reward or recognition. Some scientists postulate that they may be related to J2EE Consultants, although the latter typically require upwards of $200k a year to survive.

The non-news is a blow for 'Just Give It Up Already', a charity whose stated aim is to return Semantic Web developers to the wild, where they can hopefully resume normal lives. "I wish they'd just announce that they've finished and give the heck up," muttered an spokesperson. "I mean, they've had that web page up *forever*."

Even on such popular Internet forums as Slashdot, users risked burning large amounts of karma just to post long, satirical messages in pseudo-Onion format. "It's not much," said kahei, one such poster, "but if I can persuade even one of these poor guys to just let the Semantic Web thing go, then it's worth it."