Re: RDF for 12 year olds was Re: A discussion: Is semantic web an old fashioned idea? Is it bubble, unworthy or an interesting research area - Post your comments

Danny Ayers wrote:

> Adam Souzis wrote:
> 
>> Mazzilli, Rodrigo wrote:
>> 
>>> HTML 1.0 was probably not the best hypertext markup language we
>>> could have invented but it was simple and straightforward! Even a
>>> 12-year-old child could understand it and (boom!) suddenly
>>> everyone was writing web pages.
>> 
>> Is the same level of simplicity possible for the SemWeb?
> 
> Regarding 12 year olds, I think they would be receptive to the basic
> idea of "describing stuff" and the taxonomies, perhaps less so with
> ontologies, joining the descriptions together and (waaah!)
> Description Logics. For general adoption, I reckoned there's a lot
> can be gained from specific applications that are designed directly
> for the end user - Semaview's smart PIM material hits a good spot,
> and Storymill's approach is marvellous, check the graphics here: 
> http://storymill.net/

I strongly agree. People love personal libraries--look at the time and
effort poured into organizing record or book or photo collections. Look
at the work volunteers put into MusicBrainz--its use of RDF hasn't
stopped open-source developers from embracing it. I was disappointed 
that Kendall Clark's recent "Hacking the Library" series didn't focus 
more on the fun that can be had with RDF for that kind of stuff...

Ryan

Received on Thursday, 17 June 2004 13:33:40 UTC