Prue Deacon wrote:
> There seems to be an assumption
> that, when the technical coding framework is in place, then everyone will
> create/maintain accurate, consistent metadata content and (hey presto!) the
> Semantic Web will connect everybody to everything and will always be
> up-to-date.
I'm sorry you've got this impression re up-to-date, and I'd like to
track it down to source. Have people told you this, or written this, ...
or you're inferring it from other behavour and claims? Why on earth
would it always be up to date? Does anyone think this?
(Regarding "connect everybody to everything", we already are all
connected already, but enough of that for now...).
My sense of Semantic Web (and my motivation for the project) comes from
pretty much the opposite perspective. The fact that metadata is so
expensive to create and difficult to maintain is what motivates me to
try to make sure it can be as widely linked and re-used as possible. A
big aspect of the quality story is making sure the metadata is actually
used and human visible, which is why wiring it up to HTML formats (the
GRDDL and RDFa technologies) and to query systems (hence SPARQL) are
both important. RDF does come with some conceptual baggage for sure, but
well we never managed to define a non-RDF DC cleanly (including an
extension model --- dc.publisher.address-2.postcode etc ) that people
were happy with. I hope the boring/ugly bits of RDF (definition of
'literal' etc) can be swept under the carpet through better docs,
without leaving too many lumps...
cheers,
Dan
--
http://danbri.org/
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