The Semantic Web is like a Box of Chocolates
The Semantic Web has had its challenges over the years in trying to become mainstream. One of the most promising subareas (that has the best chance) is Linked Data. Not that LD is dependent on the SW - all you really need is consistent and persistent URIs and a way to say “sameAs” in a number of ways....SKOS could help here.
Anyway, TBL’s recent talk entitled “Linked data: it's is not like that; it's like a bag of potato chips” (see the video and blog) was not the answer. LD is not like a Bag of Chips. The information on the back has been standardised by government and social requirements. There is no linking between a “nut allergy” on a Italian bag of chips to an Australian bag of chips. The analogy falls short.
I agree there needs to be better efforts to explain all parts of the SW to broaden it’s impact, and we really need good use cases, analogies, stories to do it....
Other wise we will end up with the Semantic Web being like a box of chocolates !
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....