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

In the spirit of LOD and http://infomesh.net/2002/swhaiku/

Semantic Web state?
Web flourishing with data:
Serendipity.

Lee

Danny Ayers wrote:
> In brief, some time soon I'm planning to do a moderately comprehensive, 
> fairly non-technical write-up on this topic (for Nodalities [1] - has 
> quite a large & varied readership, including Planet RDF :-)
> I'd like to try to be as objective as possible (personal ideosyncracies 
> aside). But I'm really hesitant... I want to do the topic justice, but 
> am totally ignorant of a vast amount of what's been happening in the 
> field of late (and have a terrible memory!). So I would very much like 
> to draw on other people's knowledge and experience, different 
> perspectives, even vague intuitions on this. In short, he-elp!
> 
> Please reply on-list if it's ok for direct publication (include your 
> homepage URI if you want quoting), mail me personally if you have 
> off-the-record comments - if I use I won't mention source.
> 
> The inspiration - last month I had the pleasure of attending a talk by 
> Ivan Herman entitled "State of the Semantic Web" [2] (apologies Ivan, 
> the most recent version of your slides I could find online are last 
> year's at [3], but I think those carry the gist). Great material, but 
> clearly he was there primarily in his role as semweb lead at the W3C, 
> though to his credit he went far deeper than mere cheerleading.
> 
> (I too do semweb stuff as a profession, but I'm fortunate enough that 
> the company I work for encourages speculative exploration - if I 
> asserted "the semweb sucks!", it'd just lead to further discussion ;-)
> 
> Ok, so for this as-yet hypothetical write-up, I'd like to include a few 
> success stories, as well as an example or two of things that *haven't* 
> worked.
> 
> Now a few random areas I'd love to hear thoughts on - some of them 
> involve prognostication, but I'll interpolate backwards (!)...sorry, 
> lots more bullets than I initially intended - please just pick any that 
> you feel strongly about! -
> 
> * Obviously Semantic Web technologies potentially have a big role within 
> the corporate Intranet. How are things going there?
> (Personally I'm not comfortable with distinctions between "Public Web" 
> and er, "HTTP on the LAN" or even "Our Lovely Inference Engine", but for 
> present purposes I'll keep my mouth shut :-)
> 
> * Money! What's the current status of funding for semweb research in 
> academia? Inside big corps? Gov. orgs? Funding from VCs etc?
> 
> * What's the range of application of RDF like nowadays? (Obscure 
> examples would be nice)
> 
> * What is the significance of recent interest in Semantic Technologies 
> (those without necessarily having any tie to the Web)?
> 
> * How far does RDF+SPARQL (+RDFS) get us? Where might OWL(2) take us? Is 
> there any conflict between these directions?
> 
> * How have the Linked Data initiatives changed perceptions in the use of 
> RDF?
> 
> * How's the chicken? How's the egg?
> (aside - we seem to have a decent supply of data now - but where are the 
> UIs/hooks into existing UIs/never-before-considered applications?)
> 
> * Has the role of the W3C changed in this context over the past few years?
> 
> * Can we still speak of "The Semantic Web Community" as a (reasonably) 
> unified whole? Should it be?
> 
> * Have the attitudes of the developer community at large changed much 
> towards the Semantic Web? (Did SWEO help?)
> 
> * How has/will blogging influenced the Semantic Web?
> 
> * 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?
> 
> * Slightly tangential - where do you see social networking going? 
> (Possibilities off the top of my head - unification of services; general 
> loss of interest through another fad coming along; descent into the Web 
> infrastructure) 
> - supplemental: assume the fad prognosis - what'll be next?
> 
> * Is there yet any compelling, user-friendly application that is solidly 
> based on the Semantic Web (and within that definition I'll include 
> linked data and suchlike broad Web connectivity)?
>  - bonus: if I want to show Mom how cool the semweb is, without blinding 
> her with triples, where do I start?
> 
> * Of the old layer cake, we seem to approaching the point where some of 
> the upper layers don't seem far off being ready for prime time: Rules, 
> Logic, Proof. Too optimistic?
> 
> * Again with the cake: we know we need Trust - but whatever happened to 
> Signature, Encryption?
> 
> * Named graphs are the future?
> 
> * (Summary of the last few) - are we done with new specs yet?
> 
> * Any impact anticipated from HTML5?
> 
> * If there was (is?) a Web 2.0 cake, no doubt it would now include 
> OpenID and OAuth - how compatible are these/can these be with the semweb 
> tech we know & love?
> 
> * Not unrelated, there's a fair bit of similarity between OpenID 
> Attribute Exchange and RDF, as well as what appears to be a parallel 
> stack to the (Semantic) Web with XRDS/XRI/XDI etc. Is independent 
> invention of this nature a good thing or not?
> (My mouth remains firmly shut :-)
> 
> * There's always been a Semantic Web roadmap - has its destination changed?
> 
> * What obstacles are there?
> 
> * Event/comm-related things - IM, XMPP, Twitter even - where's the 
> semweb in all that?
> 
> * Mobile Semantic Web - how're we doing?
> 
> * Ubiquitous Semantic Web - how're we doing?
> 
> * Jim Hendler's question: where are the agents?
> 
> * What are the best next actions to carry this Grand Project (tm) forward?
> 
> * Loose question - while it doesn't make much sense to say when the Web 
> was/is finished (2 hosts? 2 billion?), but barring disasters, on what 
> kind of timescale do you think we'll see a significant qualitative 
> difference in the Web at large due to Semantic Web technologies?
> 
> * Anyone noticed any serendipity recently?
> 
> * What questions did I miss? :-)
> 
> Cheers,
> Danny.
> 
> [1] http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/
> [2] http://www.semantic-conference.com/session/723/
> [3] http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0223-Bangalore-IH/
> 
> -- 
> http://dannyayers.com
> ~
> http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/this_weeks_semantic_web/

Received on Tuesday, 1 July 2008 16:24:24 UTC