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Welkin: A General-Purpose RDF Browser
Stefano Mazzocchi writes "Many consider the Semantic Web to be vaporware and others believe it's the next big thing. No matter where you stand, a question always pops up: Where is the RDF browser?
The SIMILE Project, a joint project between W3C, MIT and HP to implement semantic interoperability of metadata in digital libraries, released today the first beta release of a general purpose graphic and interactive RDF browser named Welkin (see a screenshot), targetted to those who need to get a mental model of any RDF dataset, from a single RSS 1.0 news feed to a collection of digital data."
Considering the big 1.0 for Firefox is out, I would think people who wanted their Semantic Web browsing software to be wide-spread would implement it as a Firefox plugin, no?
Simpy
The question is about whether we really need a World Wide Web that looks like Wikipedia with links to every word and generally just a jumbled mess of blue and purple text. No matter how you cut it, the problem lies in having too much information immediately available.
Imagine you are a reading a book, but each word is connected by string to a dictionary reference, and each dictionary reference definition is tied to the definitions of the words in the definition. You'd end up with a huge, eventually circular mess of string and you couldn't realistically get any enjoyment out of the book. The fact of the matter is that if you want to get more information about something, it is easy to go to an outside source to look it up. It does not need to be easier, because by making it easier than it must be you necessarily end up cluttering the thing you want to illuminate.
There is an old saw, "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." The Semantic Web, while an interesting idea, tries to make things too easy, beyond the point of usefulness. The lack of content on the Semantic Web is a testament to the uselessness of such an over-engineered web space.
Or a testament to people's inability to understand new paradigms.
Or a testament of the inability of the paradigm's creator to get people to understand it's necessity.
After looking at that screenshot, it's sooo clear to me the value that the semantic web brings to us (mirrored here as their server appears to be flaking out a bit). If anything, this makes it crystal clear why the semantic web hasn't really taken off, other than in the much more limited form of RSS feeds.
A network of random connections of semantic concepts embodied as URIs is just not a friendly form of data for humans to manipulate directly, and I don't think it every will be. That's right, I don't believe this is really an issue that's solvable with slightly better tools. I think ultimately the management of and connection of ontologies is something that computers will have to learn to do themselves.
It's just too hard to expect normal human beings to describe knowledge in any way other than the way we are used to. The web is only as popular as it is because HTML is a simple, appearance-based way to markup documents (yes, I realize strictly speaking HTML isn't supposed to describe many aspects of appearance per se, but there's no denying that it comes from that root). We understand bold and italics (and even strong and em), but ask somebody to generate two concepts by constructing URIs for them and relating them in subject-predicate form and they are going to look at you and drool.
Even programmers aren't used to the idea of describing knowledge - it's one thing to tell a computer what to do, it's another thing to tell a computer how to know about something that you know.
Alright, I know I'm opening myself up to the flames here, so flame away. Anyway, I think the "semantic web" will need to wait for tools like Cyc et. al. to come along far enough to construct and relate their own ontologies out of English text, and until then all we will see is stuff like RSS or RDF files in Firefox extensions to describe deployment conditions (i.e. stuff that can be done with any arbitrary XML dialect that doesn't really qualify as the "semantic web" to me).
Almost everybody here seems to be missing the point: RDF isn't for you--it's for your computer. The point of RDF and the Semantic Web is to structure knowledge so that programs can interact with one another to perform better, even in some cases simulating intelligent decisions. Unless you're working in developing Semantic Web technology, you should never have to look at an RDF document.
It's not a wiki. It's not a new way to see metadata. It's your softwares' version of the WWW.
It's not always about you humans.
1) people like to masturbate.
2) some people like to look at pictures of naked girls while masturbating.
3) some people like to think about graph theory while masturbating.
The semantic web is the unfortunate result of #3.
Now, while I have no problem with any of these behaviors, I do ask that people in group #2 to keep their sticky dirty magazines under their bed, not on their coffee tables; and people in group #3 to likewise keep their inventions locked in the closet, and not release them to standards bodies or working groups.
So when you see someone in a clear frenzy of sexual excitement talking to you about "ontologies" and "reification", simply smile politely, and call the police.
Remember, these people are the exception, not the norm, in an otherwise healthy society.