Linked Data For the Masses?
In a must-read blog, Brian Kelly looks deeply into Linked Data and asks if we have progressed since 1998 when Tim Berners Lee was looking for a Green Car under $15K here in Queensland.
The results are not what the Semantic Web community would like to see:
“the similarly trivial question which Tim Berners-Lee used back in 1998 – Is there a green car for sale for around $15000 in Queensland? – was perhaps responsible for misleading people into thinking the Semantic Web was for ordinary end users. I am now starting to wonder whether a better strategy for those involved in Linked Data activities would be to purposely distance it from typical end users and target, instead, identified niche areas.”
This resonates with my first blog:
“Could the Semantic Web be harmful? It could if it continues to steer resources towards an unobtainable goal in web-scale terms. Such resources could be used to provide more grass-roots level solutions”
We still have a long way to go....