The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview
Clay Shirkey,
Nov 07, 2003
Clay Shirkey makes two important points in this article. First, deduction is not nearly so useful as proponents of the semantic web imagine. And second, people will always have differing views. Both appear to seriously undercut the potential value of the semantic web, even when it is realized. I have argued for the second point on numerous occasions (the first I have always considered self-evident), to little avail thus far. The Resource Profiles paper I released on Wednesday is designed to address these issues (again, right-click, download, and read it in a text editor). Because, deduction isn't the only game in town. Now I still have some writing to do at the end of the paper, but let me presage it now by saying: the killer application for the semantic web will be inductive inference, induction to evaluative results, for example. Of course, first you need a way to express this, which is what the bulk of the paper is about.
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