Interesting presentation of the thoughts and images we use to think about the semantic web. I like the use of pictures to denote speakers throughout the article (think 'reification'). If anything, what emerges in this discussion is the lack of understanding about just what the semantic web is and could be. Clay Shirkey's misunderstanding of the role of the syllogism, for example, suggests that the semantic web could only be used for deductive inference, but this of course is false; in my paper Resource Profiles I describes systems of inductiove (or projective) inference using metadata. The hard part about the semantic web, I think, will be to crystallize a vision of what it could be, to find that metaphor that fits exactly right. My own preference is to use language as the metaphor, with resources as the 'words', but even that doesn't fit perfectly. Nothing will, because the semantic web is unlike anything previously attempted.
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