Moreover, my feed reader has both the SW and LD terms, and I’ve discovered that I miss a lot of relevant info if I just use LD and exclude SW.

“Semantic Web” doesn’t describe what it is, but how it does it, and how it does it is unfamiliar territory to most, including developers. That’s why it’s inscrutable from a layperson’s perspective. Describing the migration from document to data Web at least has a visual association.

BTW, this is a typical dilemma for a software subject, particularly such an ephemeral one. We do the best we can with examples and metaphors, and hope some people have the patience to ponder what we say.

I’m not disagreeing with you to be difficult, and certainly not to be fashionable. I’ve read what you said, and so far it hasn’t changed my views. Your comments imply that if I was approaching this objectively I would have done so, but surely the same would apply to you with respect to my comments. We just happen to differ in opinion, and that’s fine, a natural part of the discourse.

Re 1. You didn’t write this, it’s an impression I’ve formed, that you’re keen to align yourself with the “Semantic Web” label. Taking the historical view I’m curious about that, compared to other potential labels.

Re 2. Clearly I can’t judge this objectively, but my subjective experience tells me that starting from the term “Linked Data” offers less resistance to understanding than starting from “Semantic Web”.

Re 3. In my experience people find it hard to derive the desired meaning from the term Semantic Web, without receiving further explanation, even if they do break it down into constituent parts. If people are still conflating the Web and the Internet I do wonder what they make of “Semantic Web”, but if you’ve had more success that’s great.

Re 4. Greg, all I said was that I perceived something. If you don’t see the two as incompatible then that’s great – we agree on something at last

Re 5. A useful clarification, thanks.

I don’t think there’s anything to add regarding 6. Let’s agree to disagree and get on with building this Semantic Web and its associated applications, whatever definitions we choose. I might continue to disagree with you, but please rest assured it would be on the merits of the arguments rather than on any principle of disagreement. Thank you too for the discussion

Tom.

Pretty much agree 100% with you comment:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rdf_semantic_web_apps.php#comment-112737

In fact some of it could have been written by me I often mention at work that the SW is pretty much at the same stage the web was back in the early/mid 90s. For me the linked data cloud is pretty much analagous with those directories of the web you could purchasse from all good book shops.

Given the definition of the SW I personally adhere to and understand a lot of current, so called, SW applications are not really SW. This does detract from them being good applications, just not SW applications.

Still the beauty of ontologies is we can agree to disgree. Shall I construct an OWL ontology defining a SW app?

I would, however, love to see more applications of RDF in a linked data stylee. There are a lot of us putting data up, there are ppl like you guys at Talis, Sindice, Zitgist and Virtuoso desiging some great tools/platforms…but it would probably be fair to say there are thus far no REALLy great RDF applications out there on the web. Fair comment?

Overall, I hope it’s clear we simply disagree on what can use the term SW and what can’t. And I hope you won’t join the ranks of those 2 or 3 other linked data folks who seem to have decided that whatever I asserted they’d be opposed to it… out of principle (or lack thereof). Thanks for the discussion Tom.

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree (though not by as much as I disagree with Greg Hehe. Just as one final question though, from a technical rather than privacy/security/intellectual property perspective, why would any of these apps built on the SW technology stack not want to be in the Web, Linked Data-style?

Feel free to save the answer for over a beer in October if you feel like you’ve expended enough energy on this already

Cheers, Tom.

Thanks for your comments and pragmatic view on the topic. I look forward to your input in thinking through how the Linked Data community needs to respond to and can make use of OWL2. I think I owe you an email reply on that, right?

Regarding the top-down bottom-up distinction, I (being brutally honest here) think it’s an utterly worthless model for understanding, characterising or communicating about the Semantic Web (or whatever one wants to call it). Some of my issues with it are listed here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rdf_semantic_web_apps.php#comment-112737

Cheers, Tom.

Picking up on your comments from 2nd March, I have to say I’m a bit confused. I’m surprised that, as a marketer, you’re so keen on using a term that has had a history as rocky as “Semantic Web”, and been subject to so much confusion and misunderstanding.

You say in your most recent comments that “’semantic web’ means a web that better gets the meaning of information”. I don’t disagree with this rather vague statement (though I still fail to see where the Web is in most of the apps you class as Semantic Web), but seriously, I’ve been explaining the Semantic Web to people for years and most just don’t ‘get’ this kind of explanation. It’s not the fault of those people, it’s just an abstract concept that is hard to grasp if you’re not immersed in the field.

So a piece of advice from me to you: choose a term to explain your area of interest that makes sense to people, even if you use your preferred label when talking to peers. As I suggested above, something like “Smart Web” or “Intelligent Web” may be somewhere worth starting. These terms are far from perfect, but they’re at least a step closer to passing the elevator test.

On the same note, you say that “the semantic web is a term that implies broader benefits than those linked data is capable of offering”. Seriously, again, I don’t think that for 99% of the world’s population the term “Semantic Web” implies any benefits whatsoever! The Semantic Web research community made this mistake already, and paid dearly for it. In contrast, talk to someone about using the Web to link data together and you’re likely to witness the kind of excitement and clarity of understanding that I’ve seen many times in the last few years.

Switching focus to other themes in your comments… For the record, I have no problem with calling Linked Data apps “Linked Data apps”. But to purposefully shy away from also calling them Semantic Web applications would be ludicrous.

I think you’ve missed a major point in my previous comments, so to try and put it a different way: I perceive that you see Linked Data and semantic technologies as somehow incompatible, perhaps even in competition for the hearts and minds of the world at large. What I said above, and will repeat here is that this kind of view is false; there is a pipeline or cycle that can feed the Web of data, which can in turn feed heaps of smart applications built on semantic technologies, which can then choose to re-feed the Web with more data. If these apps want to be part of the Web ecosystem then they need to have a way of being in the Web – not just delivered across the Web, but actually in it. This means publishing, or at least consuming Linked Data at some stage of the process.

The Linked Data community is not trying to force-feed anyone with our technologies – we don’t have any technologies(!), only some guiding principles, a whole heap of enthusiasm, a bunch of successes under our belts, and a rapidly growing community of committed parties. The key technologies that underpin Linked Data are URIs and HTTP (these sound familiar?), RDF, and a little bit of RDFS/OWL.

No one is forcing the groups that Lee and John describe to use any of these technologies, just as no one forced anyone to use URIs, HTTP and HTML the first time around. People chose to use these technologies because they enabled connections between, and access to, things that had never been easily connected or accessed before, and this brought huge benefits. I’m a strong believer in bringing these benefits to data as well as documents, and this is why I have strong views about what constitutes the Semantic Web. You don’t have to agree, but if you want your applications or services that are powered by semantic technologies to be silo-free and right there in the Web, then you’d best start investigating Linked Data interfaces for them. This is the best bet we have right now for building a Semantic Web.

P.S. Yes, please can this false dichotomy between marketers and programmers please be put to rest once and for all. It’s not a helpful or accurate way of characterising the world.

And on my blog here:
http://www.semanticsincorporated.com/2009/02/the-siloed-view-of-the-semantic-web-as-linked-data.html

Yes, I am at least partially a marketer (“boo oo, he’s involved with money… we programmers have pure intentions and don’t need to get paid…” Time to move on, this is a broken record…), although generally working on helping start-up with commercialization, and not running ads on soap opera. And yes, I think the attempt at restricting the semantic web brand are futile and it’s much better that way. Not b/c it can “make the old look new”, but because “semantic web” means a web that better gets the meaning of information, and that’s what people will look for. If that’s not what it does then rename it. But it’s too late for the semantic web, as others pointed out in this thread.