Re: What Happened to the Semantic Web?

On 11 November 2015 at 18:25, Ruben Verborgh <ruben.verborgh@ugent.be>
wrote:

> Hi Kingsley,
>
> While your main points are correct, I disagree with your conclusion.
> I guess everything depends on what you mean with "The Semantic Web",
> but if I read the article with that title, we're arguably _not_ there.
>
> In that sense, I find it strange you use Google as an example of success.
> The fact that the big players are doing something with Linked Data,
> is not necessarily a success, as they have much larger means than most of
> us.
>
> For me, the Semantic Web vision has always been about clients.
> It's a democratic principle of publishing and consuming data:
> everyone can say anything about anything,
> but everyone should also be able to consume that data.
>
> At the moment, consuming seems only within reach of the big players,
> who have the capacity to do it otherwise anyway.
> In what sense did we succeed then?
>
> To me, The Semantic Web is like Google, but then run on my machine.
> My client that knows my preferences, doesn't share them,
> but uses them the find information on the Web for me.
> I still hope to see that. Then, we might be there.
>

This is how the semantic web works for me today.

In fact I was just in the process of uploading my nutrition data, pedometer
data and readings from smart scale (weight, body fat, BMI, fat rate, heart
rate).

It all integrates now with my social context, my personal data, pretty much
anything I want to add.

So for me this is a reality, thanks to Solid.  That's the part (4) that I
was saying was most exciting! :)


>
> Best,
>
> Ruben
>
>