LibraryPlanet.com

bq.The Semantic Web, with its neat ontologies and its syllogistic logic, is a nice vision. However, like many visions that project future benefits but ignore present costs, it requires too much coordination and too much energy to effect in the real world, where deductive logic is less effective and shared worldview is harder to create than we often want to admit. Much of the proposed value of the Semantic Web is coming, but it is not coming because of the Semantic Web. – Clay Shirky
bq.Two parts brilliance, one part strawman. Pity, actually, as I am sympathetic with the point that Clay is trying to make. – Sam Ruby
bq.It’s been a long time since I agreed with Clay Shirky, but this time he takes some clever shots at a sacred cow who just happens to be swimming in a nearby barrel. – Dave Winer
bq.Clay’s wrong about the Semantic Web, but at least he’s articulate and entertaining about it – Anil Dash
bq.I agree with Clay that people tend to think in generalities and that context is an essential component of understanding what is meant by these generalities. But Clay makes a mistake in believing that the proponents of the Semantic Web are interested in promoting a web that would be able to deduce such open-ended generalities as this; or that we are trying to create a version of Artificial Intelligence on the web. – Shelley Powers
bq.The ultimate paragraph of this piece curiously suggests that maybe metadata is a good idea after all, as long as it isn’t done in any kind of a systematic fashion. – Danny Ayers What I am thinking right now is what I usually think at these times. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. If you can think of something better, invent it. If you are bothered that someone is using it when they should not be, suggest it. To me, it is a little too earlier in the process to make any serious judgements. If it ends up working as well as the creators hope, everyone benefits. It it fails, it will hopefully be because something even better came along.