Re: Weakness in the Semantic Web?

From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>
> A colleague sent me the below message.  How would you respond to it?
>
> > ... a weakness in the Semantic Web, which is to say that there
> > needs to be universal agreement on definitions or the process
> > breaks down.  Even if there is universal agreement at a point
> > in time, definitions will evolve and mutate, as in regular
> > language.

This is certainly correct, as expecting a "universal agreement" is entirely
unreachable.

Fortunately have a "better understanding" of things expressed with Semantic Web
constructs will suffice.  Is the sentiment being expressed there a matter of
"since there's a chance it can't be universally right, then nothing should be
done"?  That ignores the fact that while the agreements may not be universal,
the scope to which they narrow things is a tremendous advance over the crude
techniques being used presently.

It's easy to say an experiment won't have workable results if you never try the
experiment.

In the case of the semantic web, we've nowhere near enough data expressed in
compatible formats to anywhere close to saying the experiment does or doesn't
work.  Meanwhile the hard work of developing and running the experiment is
further burdened by fending off the naysayers.  That likely don't have viable
content to add anyway.

-Bill Kearney

Received on Monday, 5 May 2003 09:28:08 UTC