xml-dev - Re: Success factors for the Web and Semantic Web

["Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>]

> URIs in general remain deeply amorphous.

Yes, they are, but I thikn some of the confusion about "URIs pointing to
information" is derived from a popular misnomer: "that because the SW is
evolving from all of the technologies and architectures of the WWW, it is
going to be a similar system". Just to clarify that, it isn't! If people
think that they can look for the best porn site in the galaxy on an SW
search engine and find it, then they are very much mistaken. That is *not*
what the SW is about: it's a database, not a book (or picture book).

So what can the SW do (potentially)? Well, it should be able to reduce the
burden on our everyday lives. For example, it could automatically store
dentists appointments, itmes, dates, places etc, so that you just have to
query a database as to when your next appointment is, and you get a whole
other host of important infomration about it. It won't be so hard to assert
definitively that "this is the database for my dentists appointments", but
it would be impossible to assert what "the best homepage in the galaxy" is.
RDF isn't about making shaky prose assertions, it's about simple definitive
logic.

In general, the fact that the SW isn't taking off so fast is that people
are clearly not well defined upon its principles - I am still stuggling so
much to comprhend what it is/could be/do etc., that it's unreal. But I am
sure that if you think of the SW as what you want it to be, and not as some
catastrophe that the rest of the world is creating apart from you, then it
will eventually come about, and be vehemently helpful.

(Most of this is taken from my WWW Notes thing).

Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
http://uwimp.com/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ [ERT/GL/PF]
"Perhaps, but let's not get bogged down in semantics."
   - Homer J. Simpson, BABF07.