technology

With the official announcement that RDF is in Drupal core and the Semantic Web conference in DC, I wanted to take time to respond to "tales of a semantic web skeptic". Healthy criticism, and a good read.

This piece is to defend the vision, if not the execution.

I helped get RDF into Drupal and spoke on the topic at two DrupalCons (one in Brussels and the other in Barcelona). No credit beyond that belongs to me, I've done no development on it since.

Arguments are mostly semantic about the semantic web. The computer science is done, the technology is used in real world applications in genetics, law, and military applications.

What is perhaps a PR shift is to differentiate the upper-case and lower-case semantic web.

The semantic web:

• a data exchange standard for graph based meta data and logical meta data
• a webservice with a standardized API
• a graph database, or other specialized store
• consumers or Agents

The Semantic Web (a la W3C)

• RDF(S), RDFa, OWL(S), etc
• REST/ SPARQL
• Sesame, Jena, YARS, Redland, etc
• Semantic Agents

Microformats and popularizations are all good. Folksonomy instead of Taxonomy - Clay Shirky, or rather, the mob (you and I) he describes, is hard to argue with. To mash up verified, trusted content in federated queries from heterogeneous data sources is cool to me, but not everyone.

Tim Berners-Less talk at Ted changes the term to "Linked Data". That makes sense. I think there's a struggle to create a revolution and an industry again - something with as big an impact as the web. Linked data is the web Sir Web wants/wanted. But the first web didn't happen because a few folks wanted it. We needed it. As the YCombinator mantra goes "make something people want". Making Semantic Web software has, in the past, made Semantic Web people happy... but not too many others (I have first hand experience in this).

A final two points:

Maybe it's fair to say the community may be too top-down. Luckily, freedom of speech extends to computer code.

Not everyone is going to be inspired and "believe" in grand visions. Artificial intelligence is perfect analogy. Our culture has adopted the term - for better or worse - to mean lots of things.

Cloud computing. A great idea, unlocking new markets, new opportunities for internet startups to have access to computing scale and power. Head in the clouds? Like clean electric cars, the electricity still comes from somewhere. Maybe the cloud isn't puffy and white - it might just be black.

At a recent O'Reilly Ignite Boston, Tim O'Reilly gave the company spiel, mixed with a little extra enthusiasm and praise for technologists - a population thought of as family at O'Reilly, if not flock. The latter half of the talk uncovered the motivation for the emotion. Reminding me of Dennis Hopper Californian dramatics, he pleaded to do something that mattered. What mattered? The environment and education. Work on that, do something that matters.

Mr Big O. recounted ( or perhaps therapeutically re-lived what could be interpreted as post traumatic stress disorder) a meeting with the chief researcher for still partly secret International Report on Climate Change of a UN agency. Tim's question was on humanity's chances of surviving. The answer given: "we're fucked". Don't trust the UN? So thinks the pentagon too.

Even if climate change isn't "real" - the game still has to be played out because just maybe we are heading to the land of FAIL. Yes, Fuckdom. Not fuckdom like, "hey, I like to scare people", but fuckdom like inheriting the worst code you've ever seen which depends on closed source. There's a better chance of climate change being a big problem than you'll ever succeed significantly in a start up. Personally, I want to maintain the legacy app called Earth....