xml-dev - RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?

[Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@earthlink.net>]

10/16/00 4:34:55 PM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com> wrote:

>Blow off the syntactic web or enumerate the syntaxes.  There are many.  
>Good luck. If by this you mean, solidify the XML application vocabularies, go 
>for it.  

>The Semantic Web is a crock.  You can't explain and neither can 
>Berners-Lee.  It is the kind of requirement that leads to the noisy specs 
>everyone is protesting.  

>If a requirement can't be described in prose most of us can agree to, it is a 
>bogus requirement and should be banned from future discussion.  

>Web services can be precisely enumerated such that even machines can figure
>out which service is which.  As to whether what they find and provide is what
>was asked for, humans determine that nicely when they orchestrate 
>services.

This is the key point.  Much of the hype I've heard about the Semantic Web 
claims that it will actually enable something useful by allowing B2B commerce 
to be "autonomous and anonymous."  That, IMHO, is BS.  The core point of the 
work of Deming and others was that customers and suppliers need close, 
interdependent relationships.  Autonomy and anonymity may indeed be desirable 
characteristics to the lonergeek personality, but they're absolutely the last 
things a customer/supplier relationship needs.  Enabling partners to deal at 
much-greater-than-arms-length is pouring gasoline on a fire.  Cutting the 
human element out of business is *not* a way to improve it.

  
>Actually, some architectures are in place, are precisely described and 
>are being implemented.  .net is one.  Because of that, we can build with it, 
>for it, and interoperate with it.  No W3C required other than to not put 
>cruft into the base specifications such as XML syntax.  

>Semantic web my behind.  I just want to order a pizza, not have 
>mozarella explained to me.

Here's my analogy: interoperability means that I can call any pizza parlor I 
want and order a pizza without regard to who my telecommunication suppliers 
are and who the pizzeria's telecommunications suppliers are.  It does *not* 
mean that I can call the barber shop and have them take my order for a pizza.