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

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

That is fine.  Annotated systems are common.  One of 
the most common applications of independent linking 
is annotating resources particularly where you don't 
have write access to a resource and you want a means 
to click on something and get back a navigation 
control, eg, displaying an n-way link as a select 
list or dropdown in a moded window.  Collaborative systems 
have made use of this idea for some time now.  I think 
you are dead on in the rest of that.  It is an annotation 
service.  That is good thing to have and a proven 
concept.  Engage.

My intent is to remove the term "semantic web".  It 
means too many different things to people.  It becomes 
like the answer from the Delphic Oracle, "If you 
go into battle, a great kingdom will be destroyed." 
True no matter who won so she got to keep being an 
oracle without contributing anything of value.  There 
is a word for that:  vaporware.

The vision of large scale distributed inteoperating services has 
been around in serious form since the late eighties when 
the DARPA, CALS, DICE, all began to talk about it. 
DoD put a lot of money into it because they knew they 
needed it before businesses would admit it was possible. 
A lot of the ideas floating around the XML community 
come from those initiatives.  The scale has not changed 
since those initiatives included suppliers.  CALS started 
as Computer-Aided Logistics and ended up being Commerce 
At Light Speed.  As the acronym became more nebulous, so 
did the achievements and that is what we want to avoid 
on this round through the spiral.  In this renaming of 
concepts and revisionist history some think so vital 
to their reputations or opportunities, it would be good 
to also learn from past mistakes.  Vaporous terms are 
one of them.  It knocks the picture out of focus by 
expending resources chasing dreams instead of engineering. 

Oh... and we don't have to fight Microsoft any more.  They 
were a real pain in the early days and not even considered 
a serious computing platform.  They also had a myopia about markup that 
was considered a deal breaker.  That is the one achievement 
of the WWW that cannot be disputed:  Netscape woke up the 
sleeping giant.

What we have not that we didn't have then:  cheap 
processors and memory, agreements on simple presentation 
languages (the missing piece of the IETM puzzle, should 
have been 87268 - View Package) and a commodity protocol: HTTP.

What does that mean:  we can afford the services now.  That 
has changed.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h