Web Redesigned With Hindsight

Randy Sparks writes "Tim Berners-Lee has been speaking about his vision for the Web. He proposed the Semantic Web six years ago and it's taken that long for the W3C to ratify his plans for Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL). Effective the Semantic Web is the Web as we know it put into database form and with added metadata. You can read more about it over on MacWorld and see a Semantic Web proof-of-concept at the Web Archive."

Comments

Redesign the web?

[3Suns]

You can't just "redesign the web" !!

Just who the hell does this "Tim Berners-Lee" guy think he is, anyway!?

Too complicated to succeed

[14erCleaner]

The web is popular because it's easy to create web pages. The semantic web stuff strikes me as something that only someone with a PhD in semantics could love. IMO it violates the KISS principle.

Re:Too complicated to succeed

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

What are you, anti-Semantic?

Racist.

Re:Too complicated to succeed

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

And don't forget the subset of Ontology that only lets you join if you can prove that you have telekinetic or brain-scan ability.

I'm speaking, of course, of...

(wait for it)

PSI-Ontology.

I'm here all week - try the veal!

20/20 hindsight

[oskillator]

I wonder if he's going to spell REFERRER correctly this time.

Metacrap

[fawcett]

Readers might enjoy Cory Doctorow's essay, Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia, on why the Semantic Web will never succeed. His key points:

• People lie
• People are lazy
• People are stupid
• Mission: Impossible -- know thyself ("People are lousy observers of their own behaviors. Entire religions are formed with the goal of helping people understand themselves better; therapists rake in billions working for this very end.")
• Schemas aren't neutral
• Metrics influence results
• There's more than one way to describe something