Re: discussion about Semantic Web realization

Hi Maciej --

The following paper may be useful for your discussion about the Semantic
Web:

       http://www.w3.org/2004/12/rules-ws/paper/19

The paper is three years old, but so far I'm not aware of anything that
substantially addresses the concerns it raises.

Apologies to folks who have seen the paper before. Hope this helps.

                                        -- Adrian

Internet Business Logic
A Wiki and SOA Endpoint for Executable Open Vocabulary English over SQL
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com    Shared use is free

Adrian Walker
Reengineering

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 4:01 AM, Maciej Gawinecki <mgawinecki@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> 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).
>
>
>
>