Topic Maps vs. RDF+DAML+OIL? RDF is inferior? What's RDF's value in the effort to Semantic Web?

HI, rdf world:
    
    Garshol seems to be quite in favor of his Topic Maps in his paper "Topic maps, RDF, DAML, OIL:A comparison" (available at:http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tmrdfoildaml.html). 
    However, after looking into their diagram representations in light of Semantic Network, I found it is indeed that Topic Maps(TM) inherently precedes RDF family(RDF+DAML+OIL) and RDF is, at heart, a relative lower-level knowledge representation language with at least one level lost. 
    
    So what's RDF's value in the effort to Semantic Web? 
    
Collin