Re: KIT releases 14 billion triples to the Linked Open Data cloud

On 1 Apr 2010, at 17:58, Dan Brickley wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 6:25 PM, Martin Hepp (UniBW)
> <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:
>> Hi Denny:
>> Without spooling your All Fools' Day joke: I think it is a dangerous one,
>> because there is obviously a true core in the expected criticism.
>> 
>> I think that without any need, you give outsiders additional ammunition to
>> confirm other outsiders' prejudices against the value of linked data. I bet
>> you will find lots of triples in the current LOD cloud that have information
>> value close to the triples in your "experiment".
>> 
>> And many people communicating over the potential of the Web of Linked Data,
>> and maybe deciding about business investments, will not see the joke in your
>> page.
> 
> On the contrary, I think it was both funny and healthy for the semweb community.

I couldn't agree more, at first glance, I was super skeptical and even a tad annoyed, but seeing that it was Denny, and the fact that it was posted on 2010-04-01 put a massive smile on my face and made me burst out laughing. If anything it shows maturity in the techniques and the practise, showing how people can easily knock together such a compelling (prank of a) linked data service. Awesome...

Mischa *looking forward to seeing more SW related april fools

> My thought process when I carelessly saw the original blurb go past
> was as follows:
> 
> * oh dear, more overblown hype for some semweb thing, that's not good
> * oh, it's quite stupid in fact
> * ah it's Denny, and I like everything he makes ... and ah yeah 2010-04-01, phew
> 
> The fact that I was even for a second prepared to entertain the idea
> that this was serious, worries me. And clearly a few others on the
> list went further before realising. Which is why I say this was a
> healthy exercise. If we as a community are so used to over-hyped folly
> that we could consider that this might have been a serious offering,
> then we ought to take more care of our habits during the other 364
> days of the year. If I hadn't seen Denny's name against the project or
> actually read the paper, I'd probably have been taken in too...
> 
> If we can't laugh at ourselves, we'll be ill prepared to deal with
> criticism. And criticism is healthy for any technology community, but
> especially one whose ambitions are as large as ours. We are trying to
> build a global, integrated system for planet-wide sharing of
> descriptions of all things and their interconnections. Described like
> that, it sounds like drug-addled idiocy, but that's what we're doing.
> And the only way we'll manage it is if we do it in good humour. This
> means acting gracefully when fans of other technologies offer
> criticism, whether or not they are gentle in their words. And it means
> taking care to balance enthusiasm for the potential of this technology
> with a realisation that there's still a long way to go in making these
> tools and techniques a joy for non-enthusiasts to use...
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Dan
>

Received on Thursday, 1 April 2010 17:42:00 UTC