Re: Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings

On 2012-05-16, at 23:09, David Wood wrote:

> On May 16, 2012, at 17:45, Bernard Vatant wrote:
> 
>> Thanks to all who had this ground ploughed and sown patiently since those dark ages where Google was all but an idea.
>> Now the grain is ripe and it's a great time for them to harvest ... hope we are left with some crumbs to pick up as a reward of our efforts :)
> 
> Hmm, yes.  Will SemWeb researchers feel about Google's Knowledge Graph the way hypertext researchers feel about the Web? I hope not.

Well… I was a Hypertext researcher when the web was taking off, but I don't feel the way you mean… some of us are inveterate bandwagon hoppers I guess ;)

I acclimatised to the world of 404 errors, and inline static links with relative ease - ultimately I recognised that some of the core ideas of Hypertext (capital H) were, put simply, wrong. At the very least the significance of some of the perceived problems was hugely overstated.

FWIW I don't /think/ Google Knowledge Graph has any particular implications for the Semantic Web, it's largely orthogonal. I'd like to be wrong though. As far as I can it's neither consuming, nor producing RDF, so I just don't she why it matters in that respect.

But interesting, and hopefully useful.

> Still, Kingsley is right, too.  We are certainly busier than we have ever been, with no clear end in sight.  That's positive.

It would feel much more positive if I thought we were trying to solve the right problems. It would be much easier to know if I knew what the right problems where though.

- Steve

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