There’s a buzz going around about Clay Shirky’s recent dissection of the Semantic Web, a well-deserved buzz. I usually go to Clay’s site expecting to read something sharp and insightful, but with emphasis that seems misplaced to me (the notorious “power law” column, for instance). But I think Clay’s right on target this time.
Clay notes that Mark Pilgrim and Cory Doctorow had set out some of the fundamental problems with the Semantic Web (I knew of Mark’s, had forgotten Cory’s) — but I remembered some lively discussions of the Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence in a less formal style over at Chris Locke’s place, several times at Shelley’s,and Joe Duemer’s.
Applause for Clay — he put it together beautifully. I wish I’d written that (as David Weinberger does, too). But the big provocation for my thinking about the Semantic Web and its problems started with Shelley and Chris.
Posted by AKMA at November 8, 2003 08:22 AM | TrackBackI blogged this Shirky article yesterday too. What I wish is that he had used better examples in his "deducing truth is hard" section, because both of his examples were bogus and didn't draw the erroneous conclusions he cites. It's a shame that in an article with such a strong point to make, he had such weak supporting examples. I do agree with him that the Semantic Web folks are palming a card on where the true difficulty lies, but would it have been so hard to come up with examples that did what he said they did? When your thesis is the wrongness of other people palming cards in their arguments, it's incumbent on you to avoid the same.
Posted by: Dave at November 10, 2003 08:41 AMNote the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Simon at January 12, 2004 10:17 PMWhen a variable is finished with it's work, it does not go into retirement, and it is never mentioned again. Variables simply cease to exist, and the thirty-two bits of data that they held is released, so that some other variable may later use them.
Posted by: Cuthbert at January 12, 2004 10:18 PMThe rest of our conversion follows a similar vein. Instead of going through line by line, let's just compare end results: when the transition is complete, the code that used to read:
Posted by: Prudence at January 12, 2004 10:18 PM