You're right, of course (and I need not point out the irony that DH was in deep with AI), but I'm holding out hope (and not just because I'm bitter that the Con

You're right, of course (and I need not point out the irony that DH was in deep with AI), but I'm holding out hope (and not just because I'm bitter that the Connection Machine failed!). The main reason (in my opinion) that the semantic web has failed so far is the reliance on 1) predefined, very limited ontologies, and 2) creator-generated rich metadata. Freebase seems to me like, if not the solution, at least a good step in the right direction in terms of addressing these. The real question, of course, will be whether a userbase springs up to keep it up to date, and whether the logic behind it can keep it reasonably self-consistent. Here's to hoping.