Why the Semantic Web Marketing Message Has Failed
So some guy writes why the semantic web will fail and ends up on Slashdot. How slashdot picks their articles, I’ll never know. The article is pure opinion and guesswork (as all predictions seem to be), and it’s perfectly OK for this guy to blog his opinions.
I’m not going to argue that the semantic web (that’s *small s* semantic) will succeed, although I think it will prove useful in a large sense in some form, even if that form isn’t RDF. I think what’s really telling about the doom and gloom post is that the marketing message of the semantic web has failed.
For example, a quote from the blog post:
> The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating
Where, in all of the W3C’s semantic web literature does it says that companies must work together for the semantic web to succeed? I think this is one of the biggest misinterpretations about the semantic web. For some reason, people think that the semantic web requires these large agreed upon ontologies before anything useful happens. Not only is that near impossible (for anything but the most generic or free form terms and definitions) but as we all know, specifications born out of committee have an awfully hard time meeting the pragmatic needs of the masses.
For the semantic web to succeed, the W3C doesn’t need more technical specifications (although a new RDF XML serialization would be nice). Instead, the W3C needs to completely revamp its marketing message. For instance, distance the semantic web from AI. AI, no matter how promising, leaves a bad taste in your mouth. We need to completely deny any relationship to AI. Secondly, the W3C needs to rebrand the semantic web as “Simply Putting Your Database On The Web. No More, No Less. Anything Else Is Purely Serendipity.” Thirdly, the W3C needs to really drive home that the semantic web will succeed *only if* it is not built with large top down ontologies.
So repeat after me: “The semantic web is just an effort to help expose the database that you already have to the web as RDF. Primary keys become URIs, and the intersection of a row and a column is a triple.”
Or, to put it another way:
Problem: I have data, most likely in a relational database, that I need to get on the Web.
Solution: Expose that data as RDF. URIs are the primary keys for the data.
March 21st, 2007 at 9:24 am
Exactly. AI can simply be aided by it if needs be. When you realise that the basic premise of the Semantic Web is exposing data on the Web in a machine understandable format to make a ‘web of data’ rather than a ‘web of pages’ it gets a LOT less confusing.
March 22nd, 2007 at 3:01 am
It’s semantic web (with small s) lol
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 am
I think this is one of the biggest misnomers about the semantic web.
Do you realise that your use of the word “misnomer” here is a misnomer? Look it up. Use of “misnomer” like this seems to result from a common misunderstanding.
(Completely agree with the rest of the post, by the way).
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:07 am
The criticism of complexity was certainly true of the semantic web standards released in 2004. That complexity combined with a lack of tools is the main reason the semantic web fizzled.
In January of this year the W3C released a working draft for a simplified standard: RDFa. This new standard will enable semantic attributes to be embedded directly into XHTML. A clear introduction to RDFa can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/
We believe RDFa, along with a supporting tool set, can form a bridge to the Semantic Web envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee.
Semantic Bridge Technologies (http://www.semanticbridgetechnologies.com) is a startup company located in Austin, TX. We are creating a tool set and the supporting infrastructure for the implementation of the Semantic Web. We are taking a very pragmatic approach. Our target audience is comprised of web designers and software engineers who build Internet applications not theorists who study semantic structures. We are building a bridge, not an ivory tower.
One of the key aspects of the Semantic Bridge Project is the creation of a dynamic and interactive ontology management system, “The Semantic Knowledge Repository”. This system along with the tools that will allow web designers and software engineers to easily interact with the repository will have a profound impact on the rapid deployment of the Semantic Web.
Sincerely,
Mike Duffy
CEO / CTO
Semantic Bridge Technologies
mduffy [at] austin.rr.com
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
[…] Semantic Web is a web of data.” Nothing about semantics. Now what? — Backtrack “Why the Semantic Web Marketing Message Has Failed” to Stephen’s original post clears up the matter: “[…] the W3C needs to […]