xml-dev - Re: RDF, the "semantic web", and the nadir of AI (was RE: Realist icprop

[Dave Winer <dave@userland.com>]

This discussion is starting to turn in an interesting direction.

I asked some questions of TBL at WWW9 to clarify for me what the Semantic
Web is, and left totally unsure. So of course my mind wants to fill in the
blanks and I think he's talking about what I'm thinking the next step for
networked content is.

To me, a writer and software developer, the first thing is a tool. The HTML
web would have been nothing but academic research if there were no
browser-editor and server. I extrapolate that if the Semantic Web doesn't
have a browser-editor (the hard part, serving is probably just HTTP) then no
one can really know what it is.

The key thing about a browser-editor is that it understand and allow easy
manipulation of structures that contain text, instead of text that contains
markup. The "semanticness" of it should be hidden behind an intuitive
interface that gets the writer to create meaningful relationships between
information, without understanding the underlying technology at a deep
level.

I think from there the format questions, which have been so hotly debated,
become easy -- what format does the browser-editor dictate?

Now whether or not this is the Semantic Web is up to TBL, it's his vision,
and he has my respect for being the inventor of something as Mind Bombish as
the WWW. I would love to visit him sometime, in a lecture-hall setting
perhaps, and listen to his mind talk about the Semantic Web. Or I'd like to
interview him, Charlie Rose-style to pull the vision out of his mind, in
words, so the rest of us can get busy making software for it.

Dave