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The uses is a very interesting question because the first things that pops to mind : it would be totally useless without the proper tools to take advantage of i

The uses is a very interesting question because the first things that pops to mind : it would be totally useless without the proper tools to take advantage of it. Basically the web is a flatland with many arrows going from one doc to the other - a one to one relational database. Semantic web (or lets call structured web) gives it a z axis to build depth. A trivial example I gave on another comment : > The way google exposes the web today is unidimensional : keywords => related website list. It's great for humans to parse. But its extremely limited for machines. Why isn't there yet an API or an UI to ask for "all books of Japanese novelists of the last 2 centuries" (website links included per book). An other example that comes to mind is : you query a person and instead of a list of related website you get a set of tabs with : bio from different sources, work, news, images & videos.... Bonus, you don't need to be google anymore to do that ! Ok that's far fetched but imagine the potential for webapps.

bane 12y ago
> An other example that comes to mind is : you query a person and instead of a list of related website you get a set of tabs with : bio from different sources, work, news, images & videos.... Bonus, you don't need to be google anymore to do that ! Ok that's far fetched but imagine the potential for webapps. So that's kind of one of the canonical examples for the SW that's always given. Query for an object and get an entire dossier back on that object, assembled, federation fashion, from tons of disparate sources all over the web. It turns out that a) that doesn't refute the API access to a bunch of relational stores all over the place and the better performance you're likely to get from those stores b) the notion that just compiling all that stuff in one place works better c) really any of the issues presented by Doctorow, read his essay again with a critical eye and think about how each of his criticisms would apply to something like this. Modern search engines have largely figured out how to provide a fairly high-level ontology equivalent to this use-case by simply parsing out the content on the pages and centrally storing it. This is not the Semantic Web.
- charlysisto 12y ago
  > Modern search engines have largely figured out how to provide a fairly high-level ontology equivalent to this use-case by simply parsing out the content on the pages and centrally storing it. If google opens up it's index to the world so you could use it as an api to query the web with the power of a relational DB, the case for semantic web would probably be pointless. But it's locked and only serves there ad system. I'm not defending Semantic Web per say, but because the lack structure in the web makes it only 'parsable' by gigantic entities like google. Their work is remarkable and they offer a nice service I can consume. But I can't really build on it. I think the debate should shift from the means to the goals... Semantic web might not be the right way to do it, but I strongly believe in the necessity of a way to (openly) connect the dots of all that data or it's a giant waste. What are the relational stores you mention in a) ?
  - bane 12y ago
    > I think the debate should shift from the means to the goals Yes yes yes. The conversation needs to change from "if we build the Semantic Web it will change everything" (where everything is unspecified and not discussed) to we need to do this, what do we need to do it. > What are the relational stores you mention in a) ? Behind most modern on-line connected websites there's a big Postgres/Oracle/SQL Server database somewhere (and increasingly non-relational no-SQL type of stores). The SW basically chose to turn the web into a giant federated RDF triple-store which, if you think about it, is kind of ridiculous from any kind of sensible performance POV, just accessing the information from the source, the databases that are used to generate the pages, seems to make more sense.

bane 12y ago

> An other example that comes to mind is : you query a person and instead of a list of related website you get a set of tabs with : bio from different sources, work, news, images & videos.... Bonus, you don't need to be google anymore to do that ! Ok that's far fetched but imagine the potential for webapps. So that's kind of one of the canonical examples for the SW that's always given. Query for an object and get an entire dossier back on that object, assembled, federation fashion, from tons of disparate sources all over the web. It turns out that a) that doesn't refute the API access to a bunch of relational stores all over the place and the better performance you're likely to get from those stores b) the notion that just compiling all that stuff in one place works better c) really any of the issues presented by Doctorow, read his essay again with a critical eye and think about how each of his criticisms would apply to something like this. Modern search engines have largely figured out how to provide a fairly high-level ontology equivalent to this use-case by simply parsing out the content on the pages and centrally storing it. This is not the Semantic Web.

charlysisto 12y ago
> Modern search engines have largely figured out how to provide a fairly high-level ontology equivalent to this use-case by simply parsing out the content on the pages and centrally storing it. If google opens up it's index to the world so you could use it as an api to query the web with the power of a relational DB, the case for semantic web would probably be pointless. But it's locked and only serves there ad system. I'm not defending Semantic Web per say, but because the lack structure in the web makes it only 'parsable' by gigantic entities like google. Their work is remarkable and they offer a nice service I can consume. But I can't really build on it. I think the debate should shift from the means to the goals... Semantic web might not be the right way to do it, but I strongly believe in the necessity of a way to (openly) connect the dots of all that data or it's a giant waste. What are the relational stores you mention in a) ?
- bane 12y ago
  > I think the debate should shift from the means to the goals Yes yes yes. The conversation needs to change from "if we build the Semantic Web it will change everything" (where everything is unspecified and not discussed) to we need to do this, what do we need to do it. > What are the relational stores you mention in a) ? Behind most modern on-line connected websites there's a big Postgres/Oracle/SQL Server database somewhere (and increasingly non-relational no-SQL type of stores). The SW basically chose to turn the web into a giant federated RDF triple-store which, if you think about it, is kind of ridiculous from any kind of sensible performance POV, just accessing the information from the source, the databases that are used to generate the pages, seems to make more sense.