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Untangling Web Information

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-don't-understand-you dept.

Ostracus writes "The next big stage in the evolution of the Internet, according to many experts and luminaries, will be the advent of the Semantic Web — that is, technologies that let computers process the meaning of Web pages instead of simply downloading or serving them up blindly. Microsoft's acquisition of the semantic search engine Powerset earlier this year shows faith in this vision. But thus far, little Semantic Web technology has been available to the general public. That's why many eyes will be on Twine, a Web organizer based on semantic technology that launches publicly today."

3 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. The Story of the Semantic Web--Slashdot Style! by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, before anything even really started, The Semantic Web was merely a pipe dream.

    But that was the long long ago, so let's fast forward a few years. When its future looked most bleak, Sir Tim (who can summon fire and explosions at will) told us what to expect .... twice. And we were happy.

    Then a few years passed and nothing.

    Until the 2006 World Wide Web conference made us suspicious of the Semantic Web. We spread rumors about the Semantic Web and told all the cooler technologies that the Semantic Web was just out to rape our privacy. So we challenged the Semantic Web. And claimed it would fail.

    Just when I was expecting Sir Tim to get underneath a blanket & release a sobbing YouTube video of everyone being bastards for attacking The Semantic Web right when she was going through really tough times and that we should all just leave her alone ... the Semantic Web went mainstream and started getting real.

    I've got no problem with people pushing technologies but this one sounds more like a soap opera than anything. Has the Semantic Web changed anything for anyone on Slashdot? I haven't seen anything directly if it has ...

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:The Story of the Semantic Web--Slashdot Style! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      First off, that was brilliant.

      I've got no problem with people pushing technologies but this one sounds more like a soap opera than anything. Has the Semantic Web changed anything for anyone on Slashdot? I haven't seen anything directly if it has ...

      My problem is simply this: Assuming a "semantic web" existed right here and now, how would I use it? Google I can understand: Go there, fill in the blank with whatever I can think of, hit "Search" and hope for the best.

      Trying to get a computer to understand the meaning of a web page is, fundamentally, getting machines to do my thinking for me. In my experience, they're pretty bad at it.

      And that's not even considering sites with political spin; how would a machine work out the meaning there? Someone's going to say it's wrong, and if that someone is the user performing the search, then the semantic search is going to take the blame.

      This will also lead to "Semantic Engine Optimizers" figuring out how to polish turd websites into something that even shows up, which makes the semantic web less useful. About as useful as, say, Google is now.

      The "Semantic Web" to me is like the future: everyone has their own idea of how it will be, and the reality will disappoint them. Ideas are cheap, and at this point, nobody should care unless they're actually going to make something out of them.

      When a semantic search engine ships that is actually useful, let me know. Until then, I'll stick with the best semantic search engine I've ever seen: the people I know.

    2. Re:The Story of the Semantic Web--Slashdot Style! by quietwalker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This about sums up my experience with it as well.

      First we started off with categories, and tags in our searches. Then we switched to no-searching, but a filter-based tree mechanism for reducing the number of hits - instead of a table of contents. Then we switched to a table of contents using "task", "product" +4 other tree 'heads'. Then they started mulling over per-sentence tagging. It kept ballooning because it was obvious that though we had all these tags and a hierarchy and divisions, it didn't help - our customers used google to search for our help doc rather than our internal systems/help application.

      In the end, they decided that they needed to automatically categorize everything. I tried to point out the futility of it, and what that would get them, but no one really wanted to listen. They were very surprised in the end when they got a search engine that looked for keywords.

      Exactly what the help system they started with already did.

      The two biggest problems with semantic-anything is

      1) it doesn't provide any additional value without an exponentially increasing order level of (human) effort,
                    and
      2) Unless someone comes up with a single, agreed upon, final, categorization (an ontology) - your markup will always disagree with someone elses, except for the most simple things that would be noted by search engines looking for keywords.

      When I left, the project had been ongoing for 3 years, and they still didn't know what they wanted it to do - they were still searching for purpose and changing the target every day. ... we didn't share an office, did we?