The Semantic Web is one of these things that a lot of poeple want to see happen. The W3C concucted / embraced / created / hacked it together, releasing it as the solution to all our information integration and sharing problems. But perhaps prematurely.

I am myself very much interested in all these things, and I was the technical editor of 'The explorers guide to the semantic web' by Thomas Passin. I eat Topic maps for breakfast and have RDF for lunch, fiddle with and explore semantic data modelling all the time. I breathe XML formats, I devour notaion languages, suck in microformats and I live for the intrisic semantic hints in any good schema out there.

And I don't like the Semantic Web. Or put more accurately, I don't like the current implementations and models used for it. I hate them! I don't like their technical design, nor the fundamental philosophy behind those designs. By and large, and in contrast to Topic maps, it seems a rushed job, and I stumbled upon a very good roundup from someone I agree wholeheartedly with, which has triggered something in me; I'm no longer supporting or going down the dark alleys of RDF.

I'm sorry Danny, I'm sorry Thomas, but ... I can't go along with this any longer. The 'view source' for the Semantic Web isn't RDF in any current form, and hence, not something that I want to back anymore. 'View source' is what built the net. It is what will continue to grow it.

Permalink (Tue, 31 May 2005 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (0) | Topic maps