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"RDF" != "Semantic Web". It's certainly one vision but it's not the vision. And the Google example is relevant because the primary reason it became so useful wa

"RDF" != "Semantic Web". It's certainly one vision but it's not the vision. And the Google example is relevant because the primary reason it became so useful was that the semantics of the anchor tag lent themselves well PageRank, which was useful well before they had a "whackload of machine learning and language analysis" in play. It's probably fair to say the semantic web is about trying to make your data accessible. It includes considering that you don't know what the user agent is going to be, what degree of separation there is between that user agent and the user, how the people behind it might find whatever data you're presenting to be useful, what the capabilities of the user themselves is. So you make some effort to produce a resource that's legible to person or machine guided with reasonable direction. If you know there's an existing convention for expressing semantics that overlap with your domain, sure, use that, but if not, any thoughtful reflection of the underlying data will probably be useful. This does take some effort, and there's the question of whether or not it's worth it, particularly in a business context, because the unexpected uses of your data are often opportunities for others to not only add value but capture it. The Google example is relevant here. But the other thing is, in my experience, it's useful to you. There's a dictum attributed to Torvalds: "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." I've observed that when a web application project is oriented around thinking about relevant data and its semantically-accessible representation (that "R" in URL), the overall legibility of the project improves from an engineering perspective. Right now, with the approach of treating the browser as The VM That Lived™, it seems to me the gestalt is very much about worrying about the code. None of this is to say, though, that CSS is THE way to style documents. There's nothing about semantic resource oriented thinking that precludes using JavaScript or something else to control visual presentation. There's a lot of ways to use JS to do things worse than CSS, and CSS despite some serious warts does have a couple of decades of good thinking put into it as well, but I think there's a case to be made for examining approaches from JavaScript or another DSL (or DSSSL, heh).

jerf 9y ago
"And the Google example is relevant because the primary reason it became so useful was that the semantics of the anchor tag lent themselves well PageRank, which was useful well before they had a "whackload of machine learning and language analysis" in play." I'm talking about how Google now knows business hours and addresses and other such things about local businesses. It isn't because local businesses went in and labeled their HTML semantically. I was interacting with one business a couple of months ago that literally left the stock photos of restaurants up on their webpage that look nothing like their current location, and didn't care, because as far as the business owner was concerned, if the menu was up, the website was basically done. "It's probably fair to say the semantic web is about trying to make your data accessible." I'm not just using the Semantic Web in a vague way. I'm using it in the way in which the term was used ~2005 (and a few years in each direction), when the religiousity around declarative CSS and such was at its fever pitch. It was not just a vague desire that somebody find something useful; people literally thought someday you'd be able to do things like import semantic print semantic.Website("http://www.chilis.com/").Get("CEO") and that the "semantic" would not require what it does today, which is "a whackload of ML and online services", but would all work with glorious web standards. It failed. It failed hard. It failed so hard and so big that there's still people who haven't processed its failure, because they still think something like "it hasn't been tried", without realizing that that's how hard it failed... it was such a failure that it wasn't even a thing that could be tried because it was too impractical. But every once in a while the idea still pops up like a shambling zombie that doesn't realize it's been made dead twice over. CSS itself isn't vestigial, but a lot of aspects of its design are, including a lot of people's vague hopes about how maybe someday it'll sort of kinda become "Semantic" someday if we just keep hoping hard enough, despite its decade+ record of failure on that front. If somehow the web had been nothing but style tags until today, and we set out to replace CSS, I seriously doubt the result would be CSS again; it would probably be a JS extension.
- wwweston 9y ago
  > I'm talking about how Google now knows business hours and addresses and other such things about local businesses. It isn't because local businesses went in and labeled their HTML semantically. Consider, though, that this is in part because there already are conventions for this kind of data that make it easier for people (or machines) to pull that data out of the page. The semantic signifiers aren't markup, which moves the problem out of the trivial realm, but they're notable enough it's not even particularly necessary to use machine learning to find them. Addresses and hours are actually examples of the utility of semantic conventions, even if they're not part of a markup spec. > I'm not just using the Semantic Web in a vague way. I'm using it in the way in which the term was used ~2005 (and a few years in each direction), when the religiousity around declarative CSS and such was at its fever pitch. Speaking of religiousity, the religious world has fundamentalists who see their texts claim a flood covered the whole earth and believe the only way to read that is absolutely and literally. There are atheists who agree that's the correct way to read those texts and so obviously they're ridiculous and consequently without value. It's interesting how often the anti-religious and the fundamentalists agree on premises if not conclusions. There was a movement of true believers in a specific vision of the semantic web. What you're talking about may be the only thing those people mean by the semantic web, but it isn't the only thing that people have meant when invoking concerns about semantic markup. Perhaps it is silly to get bogged down in a discussion of the semantics of the phrases like "The Semantic Web." Perhaps instead it would be helpful if we could introduce some distinctions through the increased structure of formal terminology?

jerf 9y ago

"And the Google example is relevant because the primary reason it became so useful was that the semantics of the anchor tag lent themselves well PageRank, which was useful well before they had a "whackload of machine learning and language analysis" in play." I'm talking about how Google now knows business hours and addresses and other such things about local businesses. It isn't because local businesses went in and labeled their HTML semantically. I was interacting with one business a couple of months ago that literally left the stock photos of restaurants up on their webpage that look nothing like their current location, and didn't care, because as far as the business owner was concerned, if the menu was up, the website was basically done. "It's probably fair to say the semantic web is about trying to make your data accessible." I'm not just using the Semantic Web in a vague way. I'm using it in the way in which the term was used ~2005 (and a few years in each direction), when the religiousity around declarative CSS and such was at its fever pitch. It was not just a vague desire that somebody find something useful; people literally thought someday you'd be able to do things like import semantic print semantic.Website("http://www.chilis.com/").Get("CEO") and that the "semantic" would not require what it does today, which is "a whackload of ML and online services", but would all work with glorious web standards. It failed. It failed hard. It failed so hard and so big that there's still people who haven't processed its failure, because they still think something like "it hasn't been tried", without realizing that that's how hard it failed... it was such a failure that it wasn't even a thing that could be tried because it was too impractical. But every once in a while the idea still pops up like a shambling zombie that doesn't realize it's been made dead twice over. CSS itself isn't vestigial, but a lot of aspects of its design are, including a lot of people's vague hopes about how maybe someday it'll sort of kinda become "Semantic" someday if we just keep hoping hard enough, despite its decade+ record of failure on that front. If somehow the web had been nothing but style tags until today, and we set out to replace CSS, I seriously doubt the result would be CSS again; it would probably be a JS extension.

wwweston 9y ago
> I'm talking about how Google now knows business hours and addresses and other such things about local businesses. It isn't because local businesses went in and labeled their HTML semantically. Consider, though, that this is in part because there already are conventions for this kind of data that make it easier for people (or machines) to pull that data out of the page. The semantic signifiers aren't markup, which moves the problem out of the trivial realm, but they're notable enough it's not even particularly necessary to use machine learning to find them. Addresses and hours are actually examples of the utility of semantic conventions, even if they're not part of a markup spec. > I'm not just using the Semantic Web in a vague way. I'm using it in the way in which the term was used ~2005 (and a few years in each direction), when the religiousity around declarative CSS and such was at its fever pitch. Speaking of religiousity, the religious world has fundamentalists who see their texts claim a flood covered the whole earth and believe the only way to read that is absolutely and literally. There are atheists who agree that's the correct way to read those texts and so obviously they're ridiculous and consequently without value. It's interesting how often the anti-religious and the fundamentalists agree on premises if not conclusions. There was a movement of true believers in a specific vision of the semantic web. What you're talking about may be the only thing those people mean by the semantic web, but it isn't the only thing that people have meant when invoking concerns about semantic markup. Perhaps it is silly to get bogged down in a discussion of the semantics of the phrases like "The Semantic Web." Perhaps instead it would be helpful if we could introduce some distinctions through the increased structure of formal terminology?