discussion about Semantic Web realization

Dear all,

During our studies we are organizing discussion on realization of SW. I
agree that the topic is quite provocative but we are execting it will
result in interesting discussion with exchange of real arguments.

I know some of the prosecutor' statements (below) and I would be
grateful if you could point me some materials about similar discussion,
or commenting some of these statements. Or you can simply comment them
yourselves...

Thank you for your help,
Maciej Gawinecki

-----
Prosecutor statements

Berners-Lee's World Wide Web was not the first "Web", only the first
that succeeded on a large scale. There were numerous reasons for this:

- decentralization, no central database of content and links
- one-way links, requiring no cooperation, approval from the link target
- a simple protocol (HTTP) and markup format (HTTP) that anyone could
adapt and copy
- no established competitors serving the same need
- significant commercial interest in selling more PCs, online services,
net access, etc.
- no critical mass required to make the Web interesting and useful

The Semantic Web, in contrast:
- requires a measure of centralization in order to make sense of
schemas, i.e. the semantics cannot be built in to every client as the
semantics of HTML and HTTP were built in to browsers
- requires much more cooperation from data sources (e.g. link targets)
- is based on a complex markup (RDF) that's difficult for
non-programmers to work with
- has to compete with its predecessor and many other technologies
- has very little commercial interest, unclear revenue model, etc.
- requires a critical mass of participating sites to be interesting and
useful

Most importantly, the development of the World Wide Web was driven by
the need to solve real, primarily technical problems. The Semantic Web
was also invented in order to address a real problem (sorting through
information) but because of the reasons above and the existence of
alternative solutions (e.g. Google) the same driving need has failed to
materialize. The Semantic Web is a classic "second system"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect).

Received on Monday, 28 April 2008 12:26:20 UTC