Semantics Web

Shelley: …the semantic web is going to be built ‘by the people’, but it won't be built on chaos. In other words, 100 monkeys typing long enough will NOT write Shakespeare; nor will a 100 million people randomly forming associations create the semantic web.

Shelley understands this stuff better than I do, but I’m not convinced she’s right. My initial concern about the hype is whether we’re going to get more apps that get us tagging. If we don’t, then tags won’t have much effect. If we do, then I simply don’t know whether we’re going to be able to solve the problems inherent in scaling tags: Tags work because they’re so simple and because they are so connected to the human semantic context, but having billions of tags won’t work because they’re so simple and connected to the human semantic context. Will we be able to triangulate tags with other data – especially social data – so that we can get more out of them than we put in? It doesn’t seem impossible to me – simply knowing who created a tag lets you get more out of the tag than the person put in – but it’s not up to me to invent the stuff.
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David Weinberger on JOHO