I really don't think the semantic web was a "mistake" at all. And as much as Sir Tim would hate me for saying this, it was (is) still AI - more correctly Symbol

I really don't think the semantic web was a "mistake" at all. And as much as Sir Tim would hate me for saying this, it was (is) still AI - more correctly Symbolic AI - to collaborate at web-scale. Mind you, back then AI was a dirty word, even at MIT, and we had to couch it as "cognitive computing","distributed intelligence" etc. It is a laudable effort and I still love me some semweb technologies.