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

Conversation with Marin Dimitrov from Ontotext 07/06/2007 - a year ago:-
Marin Dimitrov <marin.dimitrov@ontotext.com> wrote:

>   Me -  Do you have any knowledge of actual commercialisation of any of the
> products of these projects apart from internal use in partner companies such
> as BT?
>


unfortunately I'm not aware of any *successful* commercialisation of
Semantic Web Services products and/or infrastructure in general (as long as
we measure success with revenues)


    Just an impression would be useful if you are not able to cite examples,
>


My personal impression is that the industry is not really eager to adopt
such "heavyweight" solutions and is looking for something much, much simpler
(or at least this is a reoccurring theme in discussions I've had so far)

back to your unanswered question to the wsmx list - I'm also not aware of
any reliable market analysis attempts for this segment
----------------------------------------
I think that there are so many areas being discussed there is no firm
overall picture.
There is the use of semantics (a logical representation of a state of
affairs), the language used for this - perhaps OWL.
The fact that using a standard confers some advantages.
The fact that to use OWL is to model data and meta data.
About this last point how many companies are prepared to devote resources to
develop new models of existing data? I think the process will be very slow.
I also think that the semantic web is substantially different to Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 represents annotated information, Web 2.5 represenets more annotated
information. Web 3.0 represents semantically modeled information. This
requires a lot more work. Knowledge of the gains for doing this work are
slow to filter down.
I think this is reflected in the report of Marin's conversations above.
Adam



2008/6/26 Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com>:

> 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/