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I couldn't disagree more. I see your viewpoint, but I think think that's extrapolating based on our current perspective -- initiatives like LinkedData, which d

I couldn't disagree more. I see your viewpoint, but I think think that's extrapolating based on our current perspective -- initiatives like LinkedData, which don't work. If you give people a tool that can do it clearly, flexibly and easily, they will blow your mind.

Tichy 17y ago
What is the incentive for people to do it? It is work, so they should get something in return. Maybe SEO for Google, ie if Google said "we'll improve your rank dramatically if you included semantic data". But even then - it would be an enormous amount of work to update all (or the majority of web sites).
- david927 17y ago
  Why would they do it? To be found. There are over a trillion web sites. Why did people put in so much work? Because they had something that they wanted to be found/seen/known by someone else. The semantic web, in the form that it will come in, won't be nearly that much work. Instead of each business creating a web site, they'll just fill out the data of what makes them what they are and what makes them unique. There are a trillion textual web sites, nearly all created in the last 15 years, most of which don't need to exist. My prediction: Very soon, they won't. Edit: I'm not talking about current initiatives like LinkedData. If the SW would only come like that, I would agree with you.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    I think your reasoning about why people make web pages is error-prone. Just another node on a semantic graph is not what anybody wants to be, otherwise the web would be populated with HTML 1.0 pages. It's not like making one of those is much harder than filling out a semantic form. > most of which don't need to exist. Who says that? I think my page on mauve socks should certainly exist. There's an awful lot of stuff like that on the web. And the SW is no more useful for finding that than search is.
- ableal 17y ago
  Maybe SEO for Google And, of course, the "semantic web" will be able to disregard bad data (published out of malice, incompetence or bitrot) because it ... hmm ... because ... hmm, er ... ah, well. They must have it covered. (I'm somewhat reminded of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system , only with the maintenance problems squared or cubed.) P.S. The RethinkDB guys (Slava, etc.) are chasing an interesting problem (DBs on SSD). I submitted a link to their blog: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1337391 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1337391
- jplewicke 17y ago
  Google actually has rolled out a small step towards this. They recognize microformats and other bits of structured data, and use them to do things like supply the number of stars for a review or to populate friend lists for social networking sites. Their official jargon is "Rich Snippets", and they have a couple posts on it at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introduci... and http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/help-us-make-web-better-update-on-rich.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/help-us-m... .
elblanco 17y ago
Tichy is correct. The semantic web is essentially a big knowledge management effort that's doomed to failure (like most KM efforts) because xyz Joe Random web page maker really doesn't see any incentive to go through and spend a couple hours of his time marking his page about futons up for the SW. It's a waste of his time. Even if he did, by some miracle do that. There's no way somebody else can make much more use of that information beyond what they already can through other, lower effort facilities like search for example. It requires powerful, web-scale reasoning engines to even make sense of that, none of which we have today. Supposing even 5 years from now, some startup is founded to do the reasoning, say Cuil 2.0, what do I get for it? Better page retrieval? Is it 2% better? Is it 30% better? It better be 30% better, because 2% better isn't worth hundreds of billions of aggregate dollars for everybody to go through and mark up all their pages to make them SW ready. And since nobody really knows (there isn't a useful reasoning engine that does anything that you can't do with search in the web space that I'm aware of, and most of the ones I've seen provide results far worse than search, Wolfram Alpha is probably the closest to a half-working semantic reasoning system you can find, and it's not like it's taken the world by storm), nobody will even bother -- a classic catch-22. The SW is just a repackaging of old broken AI ideas. We already know systems built on essentially the same principles don't do much for the average person, the SW is just a doubling down on the same bad ideas -- "it didn't work before because it wasn't big enough!"
- david927 17y ago
  Better page retrieval? This is what a lot of people just don't understand. It's not "what exists plus 30%". It's a different equation entirely. I live in the Czech Republic. A young girl recently put a note on our train station board offering babysitting services. Why didn't she use the web? Because she can't. Until someone makes a Czech babysitting database, she can't. Because no one would ever find it. Text doesn't work that way. How many web sites are: dating, real estate, jobs, etc? That's data. So why don't they put it on the web as text? Because no one would ever find it. Text doesn't work that way. Whoever fixes this, changes it all. They take out Google. They take out Monster.com. They take out Match.com. They take out Facebook. Whoever can do this will change everything. We've spent 15 years building the mountain of the web on the wrong construct. We need to rebuild it. You think it's doomed to failure but I'm telling you concretely, you'll see it within a year from today.

Tichy 17y ago

What is the incentive for people to do it? It is work, so they should get something in return. Maybe SEO for Google, ie if Google said "we'll improve your rank dramatically if you included semantic data". But even then - it would be an enormous amount of work to update all (or the majority of web sites).

david927 17y ago
Why would they do it? To be found. There are over a trillion web sites. Why did people put in so much work? Because they had something that they wanted to be found/seen/known by someone else. The semantic web, in the form that it will come in, won't be nearly that much work. Instead of each business creating a web site, they'll just fill out the data of what makes them what they are and what makes them unique. There are a trillion textual web sites, nearly all created in the last 15 years, most of which don't need to exist. My prediction: Very soon, they won't. Edit: I'm not talking about current initiatives like LinkedData. If the SW would only come like that, I would agree with you.
- elblanco 17y ago
  I think your reasoning about why people make web pages is error-prone. Just another node on a semantic graph is not what anybody wants to be, otherwise the web would be populated with HTML 1.0 pages. It's not like making one of those is much harder than filling out a semantic form. > most of which don't need to exist. Who says that? I think my page on mauve socks should certainly exist. There's an awful lot of stuff like that on the web. And the SW is no more useful for finding that than search is.
ableal 17y ago
Maybe SEO for Google And, of course, the "semantic web" will be able to disregard bad data (published out of malice, incompetence or bitrot) because it ... hmm ... because ... hmm, er ... ah, well. They must have it covered. (I'm somewhat reminded of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system , only with the maintenance problems squared or cubed.) P.S. The RethinkDB guys (Slava, etc.) are chasing an interesting problem (DBs on SSD). I submitted a link to their blog: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1337391 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1337391
jplewicke 17y ago
Google actually has rolled out a small step towards this. They recognize microformats and other bits of structured data, and use them to do things like supply the number of stars for a review or to populate friend lists for social networking sites. Their official jargon is "Rich Snippets", and they have a couple posts on it at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introduci... and http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/help-us-make-web-better-update-on-rich.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/help-us-m... .

elblanco 17y ago

Tichy is correct. The semantic web is essentially a big knowledge management effort that's doomed to failure (like most KM efforts) because xyz Joe Random web page maker really doesn't see any incentive to go through and spend a couple hours of his time marking his page about futons up for the SW. It's a waste of his time. Even if he did, by some miracle do that. There's no way somebody else can make much more use of that information beyond what they already can through other, lower effort facilities like search for example. It requires powerful, web-scale reasoning engines to even make sense of that, none of which we have today. Supposing even 5 years from now, some startup is founded to do the reasoning, say Cuil 2.0, what do I get for it? Better page retrieval? Is it 2% better? Is it 30% better? It better be 30% better, because 2% better isn't worth hundreds of billions of aggregate dollars for everybody to go through and mark up all their pages to make them SW ready. And since nobody really knows (there isn't a useful reasoning engine that does anything that you can't do with search in the web space that I'm aware of, and most of the ones I've seen provide results far worse than search, Wolfram Alpha is probably the closest to a half-working semantic reasoning system you can find, and it's not like it's taken the world by storm), nobody will even bother -- a classic catch-22. The SW is just a repackaging of old broken AI ideas. We already know systems built on essentially the same principles don't do much for the average person, the SW is just a doubling down on the same bad ideas -- "it didn't work before because it wasn't big enough!"

david927 17y ago
Better page retrieval? This is what a lot of people just don't understand. It's not "what exists plus 30%". It's a different equation entirely. I live in the Czech Republic. A young girl recently put a note on our train station board offering babysitting services. Why didn't she use the web? Because she can't. Until someone makes a Czech babysitting database, she can't. Because no one would ever find it. Text doesn't work that way. How many web sites are: dating, real estate, jobs, etc? That's data. So why don't they put it on the web as text? Because no one would ever find it. Text doesn't work that way. Whoever fixes this, changes it all. They take out Google. They take out Monster.com. They take out Match.com. They take out Facebook. Whoever can do this will change everything. We've spent 15 years building the mountain of the web on the wrong construct. We need to rebuild it. You think it's doomed to failure but I'm telling you concretely, you'll see it within a year from today.