Re: A bit of bomb throwing....

From: Zack Rosen <zack_at_civicspacelabs.org>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 20:33:16 -0800

>> Engaged hobbyists and industry people are for the most part sitting
>> out the semantic web. You need a new plan.
>>
>
> I think this is rather prematurely pessimistic.
>
> For a start, lots of technologies have a latent period - look at
> client side javascript - it spent about 8 years not being used in
> any really significant way before recently exploding. Semantic web
> technologies show a lot of signs of being woken from their slumber.

AJAX took off so quickly because it showed demonstrable new real-
world functionality and could be implemented in a fairly
straightforward manner within the current platform technologies.
Semantic Web technology is having a much harder time because the real-
world benefits are not as easily demonstrable and implementing the
concepts require new platform technologies to be created, adopted,
and proven.

> Also, I know for a fact that plenty of hobbyists (e.g. those
> involved in OpenOffice.org for one thing) and industry people
> (commercial publishers like BioMed Central and Elsevier, technology
> providers like IBM and Oracle) are now focusing on semantic web
> stuff in a way that they weren't a few years ago.

I'd love to hear more about these efforts? Can you point me towards
'real-world' open-source implementations of semantic web technology?

>
> I couldn't agree more that the semantic web is still looking for
> its gmail/google maps moment. It hasn't happened yet - but I think
> it will. Whether it will come from academia, indsutry or hobbyists
> remains to be seen - all 3 are possible and have happened in the
> past. I don't thing there's a single model.
>
> It can go:academia proves this concept, industry commercializes it,
> hobbyists extend it to sectors that appeared to lack commercial
> interest
> But it can also go: hobbyists invent something, industry grabs it,
> academics refine it.

Sure, but as I've said before the hobbyists and industries are having
a very hard time incorporating the concepts being flushed out in
academia. The costs to implementation are simply too high and the
benefits remain too unclear.

-Zack
Received on Wed Jan 18 2006 - 04:32:54 EST