Re: "State of the Semantic Web" - personal opinions?

Can we still speak of "The Semantic Web Community" as a (reasonably) unified
whole? Should it be?

Ca we speak of the syntactic web community? the semantic web is a rather
elusive concept. Depending on what we want to say we usually end up defining
it in direct relation to the vision of the SW. Which are the technologies of
the SW? I am not sure such a thing as semantic web technology exist. When I
hear people talking about SW technology they usually reefer to OWL, RDF,
JENA, etc, and those are just software components far from being
technologies on their own. For instance, JENA and OWL, how far could I go in
a business environment if I try to sell an application based on the so
called SW technologies. Usually I end up using standard technology, it just
happens that the final product has some "semantic features" and so I can
sell it as a product based on SW technology. the true is that the only
semantic it has is just in the use of a controlled vocabulary. I have not
seen so far a product that gets closer to the vision of the SW.

I do agree with the idea that semantic technology should help to have a more
effective and intelligent design process; but here we are again years away
form seeing it becoming a reality. The vision in this regard, software that
supports a more intelligent design, can be easily seen in  the recent movie
"IronMan". Clearly if one wants to design anything form airplanes to cars,
one would like to do it in the same way that Tony Starks designed his
IronMan high-tech suit armor, just by dragging and dropping objects. Such
vision is, IMHO, a 100% semantic web vision that brings together more than
just RDF, OWL and JENA, and JASON and etc. Can such a software idea be sold?
of course!!! even small pieces of it can be easily sold. Can these small
pieces be developed?

"No business man will pay $1.00 for a system that will tell him that his
mother's sister is his aunt, which is about all that SemWeb101 shows you.
 But show him an application that will tell him if his billion-dollar
aircraft design meets all requirements, and you'll be in for some money." I
think this is the state of the SW, it is more of a vision than a set of
comprehensive technologies that can deliver. So far, there is not even a
clear differentiation between the so called SW technologies and those
not-SW. If I were to sell an ontology, which is in theory to be a key
component of the SW, the ontology could not go any further than that... and
no matter how many axioms is has, the final product would not use the
ontology to its fullest.


Initially the Web 2.0 'movement' had little or nothing to do with the
Semantic Web (beyond the lower layers of the stack) - is there any evidence
of change there?

I think we are starting to see a nice move on that front. Bioportal is an
example of that trend. The use of web 2.0 and the involvement of communities
pf practice is clear there. Ontologies are key in profiling communities and
users in software like facebook and the like. Amazon with its
recommendations has also implemented a practical part of the vision and
mixed it with community involvement. In the future we will see more of that,
there is money there, but most of all, there are practical deliverables and
tangible outcomes.


On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 4:13 AM, Benjamin Nowack <bnowack@semsol.com> wrote:

>
> On 01.07.2008 00:06:53, Aldo Bucchi wrote:
> >
> >Yes, UI has been completely neglected. We need cross fertilization...
> >and we can't expect them ( UI developers ) to spend months learning
> >semweb details. We need bring the goods to their door step and in
> >their own terms.
> >
> >My 2 cents:
> >
> >http://www.semanticflash.org/
> Great to see this! I'm not a Flash developer myself, but learned
> a lot from Flash UI folks, getting them on board would be priceless.
>
> It would be cool to see milestones announced on this list (or on
> public-semweb-ui[1], which could really benefit from some non-CFP
> traffic).
>
> Thanks,
> Benji
>
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-semweb-ui/
>
> --
> Benjamin Nowack
> http://bnode.org/
>
>
> >--
> >:::: Aldo Bucchi ::::
> >+56 9 7623 8653
> >skype:aldo.bucchi
> >http://aldobucchi.com/
> >
>
>
>


-- 
Alexander Garcia
http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/75943.html