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RE: Tim BL Semantic Web article in Scientific American

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Al Snell <alaric@a...>
• Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:44:41 -0500

No fear.  Just an understanding that 
nothing that starts simple stays simple 
and marketing hype often hides a lack of 
knowledge, an unwillingness to know 
or even agendas too off-putting to 
talk about.
 
Expensive solutions for non-problems are 
non-starters.  I can take you to the 
shop in Soho and pay the specialty 
dress designer to cope with the weight 
that concentrates around your shoulders 
instead of your hips, give you form filling 
devices that distract the observer from 
the fact that the seams are double-sewn 
and your adam's apple dominates your neck, 
buy stillettos that push your chest 
forward but have extra strength so the 
slightly stumbling walk won't send you 
on to your bum... but at the end, all 
I get is an *ugly girl*.

This isn't about gender, BTW:  it is about 
false advertising, inflated expectations, 
and little surprises that might create nasty 
violent situations.

Form. Fit. Function.  Do the results 
justify the costs for the hazards of 
applying the means?  Who is asking 
these questions at the W3C?

Some public systems already collect and 
semantically link data in tremendous quantities. 
As these begin to aggregate by a unifying 
language, we don't know if the rules we 
use in day to day life apply.  When they 
don't, we are at the edge of chaos.  Life 
is exciting there.  It is also dangerous.

The evolution of the Semantic Web in terms 
of its ultimate effects is determined by 
those who can afford the metadata.  Secondly, 
it will be affected by those with the skill 
to train the agents and authorize their goals.  The 
concepts of legitimacy and authority cannot 
be reduced simply to trust in very large 
pervasive public systems.  Nabster and the dot.bomb 
to name only two have dramatically shown the results of 
"turning the world upside down" and shaking out the change.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Al Snell [mailto:alaric@a...]

That's just the marketing hype - don't be afraid. They're just talking
about public distributed systems becoming mainstream, is all. Nothing
really new!

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