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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 p

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 16y 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 16y ago
  Of course if she put an ad for "babysitting" on the web, people would find it. There is nothing "semantic" about it. You simply search for the word "babysitting". More likely, she doesn't have a computer or the parents don't have computers.
  - nekopa 16y ago
    Or, (and I say this living in the Czech Rep, and I just did a search on this country's top search site which is not google) if she put up a web page, nobody would find it, unless they wade through 30 pages of results. Unless she is a SEO wizard, it actually makes more sense for her to target locally (train station in the town she lives in) in a way that people will see it. Or, it could be financially motivated. (Hosting costs, etc...)
    - Tichy 16y ago
      Have you tried searching on Google Maps? I think they already automatically extract addresses from Web sites. So if you make a babysitting web site with your address, it should work. Also not sure how semantic web would help with targeting locally.
      - nekopa 16y ago
        I haven't tried google maps. But, neither would any locals out here. Google is number 3 out here for searches. And as to how the semantic web would help, I think your suggestion gives the evidence. Google is automatically extracting info based on its semantics, ie if it looks like an address, attach that semantic info to it, and utilise it. This also goes a long way to back up your point that the semantic web will probably start if we can do it automatically. Then I could see manual initiatives starting along the lines of wikipedia: someone has a cool way of adding semantic information via the crowdsource. That is when we will have a breakthrough in the SW
        elblanco 16y ago

david927 16y 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 16y ago
Of course if she put an ad for "babysitting" on the web, people would find it. There is nothing "semantic" about it. You simply search for the word "babysitting". More likely, she doesn't have a computer or the parents don't have computers.
- nekopa 16y ago
  Or, (and I say this living in the Czech Rep, and I just did a search on this country's top search site which is not google) if she put up a web page, nobody would find it, unless they wade through 30 pages of results. Unless she is a SEO wizard, it actually makes more sense for her to target locally (train station in the town she lives in) in a way that people will see it. Or, it could be financially motivated. (Hosting costs, etc...)
  - Tichy 16y ago
    Have you tried searching on Google Maps? I think they already automatically extract addresses from Web sites. So if you make a babysitting web site with your address, it should work. Also not sure how semantic web would help with targeting locally.
    - nekopa 16y ago
      I haven't tried google maps. But, neither would any locals out here. Google is number 3 out here for searches. And as to how the semantic web would help, I think your suggestion gives the evidence. Google is automatically extracting info based on its semantics, ie if it looks like an address, attach that semantic info to it, and utilise it. This also goes a long way to back up your point that the semantic web will probably start if we can do it automatically. Then I could see manual initiatives starting along the lines of wikipedia: someone has a cool way of adding semantic information via the crowdsource. That is when we will have a breakthrough in the SW
      - elblanco 16y ago