SW and Pervasive Computing RE: More On the Semantic Web

I am late to this discussion. However, I think this thread is too
important to be let go.

> There were many people in the 80's working on hypermedia systems, and a
> significant reason that they stalled and the WWW took off is that they
> cared about ensuring consistency, bidirectional links, etc., and Tim was
> willing to let go of that.  The result is >1 billion WWW pages, and
> probably >10 billion links.  A small percentage of the pages are broken,
> but on the whole the WWW provides tremendous value.
> 
> Similarly, I view most of what has been done in AI as focused on
> consistency, correctness, etc., which (so far) has limited the successes
> it can claim.  If you're looking for a Semantic Web that can give you
> "truth", we've got a long wait.  If you're looking for something that
> improves search results through related concepts and simple inferences, in
> a few years you should be able to get something that's useful, but not
> perfect.
> 
> 
> -Matt Jensen
>  NewsBlip
>  Seattle

I agree 100% with this view. The word "semantics" really means 
imposed structure in computer science. No one would suggest presenting 
a complete "understanding" in AI's natural lanaguage understanding 
sense. We need only enough "semantics" for what we need to do with
it.

Only "enhancing search" is propablly too narrow and too vague a
goal. In the world of mobile access to Internet, we would need
a little more "semantics" to configure the information wisely
to fit in a screen of small configuration, or even fit for voice
access.

I have been considering defining enough "semantics" only for
the pervasive computing purpose. Although concrete, it is already
challenging enough.


J. Jay Zhang