Miltiadis Lytras wrote: > 1. In 6 years time with ZERO hype and an insignificant > amount of funding, the WWW evolved from a couple > of lonely programmers to Netscape and the essential > features of what we see on the web today. > 2. In 6 years (1998 to 2004) with ENORMOUS hype and > funding, the semantic web has evolved from Tim BL's > book to a few prototype applications, which are less > advanced than technologies of the 1970s such as SQL, > Prolog, and expert systems -- and they're doing it > with XML, which is far less advanced than LISP, > which was developed in the 1950s. While I have some sympathy with his cautious attitude towards the Semantic Web, Sowa misses the rich history of hypertext systems that the WWW draws on. A different characterisation of the growth of the Web might be: 1. In 6 years (1989 to 1995) with some hype and not insignificant EU and US funding, the WWW evolved from Tim BL's original proposal to a widespread but simple system which is less advanced in certain ways than previous hypermedia systems, such as the Hypertext Editing System, Xanadu, NLS, OWL-Guide and Hypercard -- Nick Gibbins nmg@ecs.soton.ac.uk IAM (Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia) tel: +44 (0) 23 80598347 Electronics and Computer Science fax: +44 (0) 23 80592865 University of SouthamptonReceived on Wednesday, 16 June 2004 12:43:57 UTC
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