Feb 27 2007
Make or Break for the Semantic Web?
I was reading Elliotte Rusty Harold’s predictions for the XML world in 2007 and spotted this (which Danny has also pointed out):
2007 is the make-or-break year for the Semantic Web. The specs are done. The tools are in place, and there’s still not a whiff of a killer app anywhere to be seen. The Achilles heel of the Semantic Web may well be the complete disinterest of most authors in producing anything remotely approximating metadata for their pages. Search engines have learned to ignore any user-created metadata because honest publishers don’t bother with it and dishonest spammers abuse it. Screen readers don’t even bother with the limited semantics already in HTML, trying instead to figure out what the page looks like.
Is it really make or break for the Semantic Web? Elliotte goes on to say some nice things about GRDDL which I do agree with. But the contention that this is the Semantic Web’s last chance doesn’t riff with me. Technology, especially standards track work, takes years to cross the chasm from early adopters (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) to the early majority (the pragmatists). And when I say years, I mean years. Take CSS for example. I’d characterise CSS as having crossed the chasm and it’s being used by the early majority and making inroads into the late majority. I don’t think anyone would seriously argue that CSS is not here to stay.
According to this semi-official history of CSS the first proposal was in 1994, about 13 years ago. The first version that was recognisably the CSS we use today was CSS1, issued by the W3C in December 1996. This was followed by CSS2 in 1998, the year that also saw the founding of the Web Standards Project. CSS 2.1 is still under development, along with portions of CSS3.
Let’s compare that with the key Semantic Web specifications: RDF and OWL. RDF emerged from earlier work by Guha called MCF and, with a heavy dose of XML courtesy of Tim Bray, it was issued as a recommendation by the W3C in February 1999. It was followed almost exactly 5 years later by a set of cleaner specifications that tidied up some loose ends and removed some cruft from the earlier specification. The OWL recommendations were issued at about the same time.
So why did CSS take so long to gain traction? 13 years from inception, 10/11 years from first accepted specification? To be honest it didn’t really solve a new problem. For most people it just solved a problem with an existing solution in a new way. HTML already allowed people to style their pages, to align elements and to layout their documents. It did it rather well for most people and for those who thought in terms of a few HTML pages CSS just seemed like a new way to do the same old thing. However, for those who needed to apply consistent formatting across a very large number of pages; or for those who wanted to be able to offer different styles for different users or media; or for those who wanted to share their designs then CSS was the clear winner.
However, if it were not for the efforts of the WaSP raising awareness of the benefits of CSS, we’d probably still be in <FONT> hell. Who can say they haven’t cursed at the “CSS Tax” of hacks and workarounds or shouted in anger when trying to achieve simple effects such as consistent font sizes or sidebars that extend to the bottom of the page. It took the patient evangelism by WaSP 9 years for us to be able to say confidently that CSS has crossed the chasm.
There are some strong analogies with the Semantic Web here. Like CSS, to most people RDF seems to offer nothing but a new way to solve an old problem. However, for those that have needs beyond a single document or a single data silo, RDF offers something genuinely different. Sharing data, combining data from different sources, evolving schemas – all these things are strengths of the RDF model and it’s only now that people are seeking to break down the walls and share data at Web scale.
So is this the year of make or break? Hardly! We could do a gross comparison with CSS and equate CSS1 (1996) with the first RDF recommendation (1999). That suggests there’s another 3 years before we can expect the Semantic Web to cross the chasm. However, I think the real comparison has to take into account the evangelism and activism around the technology. It’s taken 9 years of WaSP cajoling vendors and pestering designers to get CSS to where it is today. The analogue here is SWEO the new Semantic Web Education and Outreach group. This group (I’m a lurking member) has only just started the battle that took WaSP 9 years to win!
I’m hoping that the time frame for the Semantic Web crossing the chasm is somewhere between the two estimates; between 3 and 9 years. I’m hoping that it’s going to be at the lower end of that scale, say 5 years, but that still means we have a long multi-year struggle to evangelise and persuade. It’s going to be worth it!
8 Responses to “Make or Break for the Semantic Web?”
[...] Original post by iand and software by Elliott Back [...]
Technology adoption is following the paths of least resistance: microformats is solving (has solved most of) the semantic web publishing and search problem with no apparent “chasm” as observed with other noted efforts.
More difficult (learning new languages), uglier (namespaces syntactical vinnegar), and simultaneously fragile (duplication of *data* in hidden files or hidden comments or hidden tags which violate the DRY principle) approaches are likely to see less and less adoption over time, in comparison to simpler, higher reliability/fidelity approaches (re-using/”salting” semantic information already being published in HTML on the web).
GRDDL+XMDP+microformatted web pages (read: Semantic (X)HTML transformed) is the most likely path to providing an Uppercase Semantic Web view of the existing rapidly growing lowercase semantic (HTML) web of data for those wishing to use those tools and technologies. Simultaneously, the growth of open source libraries which provide direct access to the intrinsically semantic microformatted web is providing an alternative to using a transformed intermediate abstract model or representation.
The growth of semantics in the existing HTML web (rather than a parallel web) and the increasing diversity of tools for accessing those semantics via a variety of models is rapidly advancing the state of the art for all semantic web approaches, now, not in 3-9 years.
Great points. I agree with you the realization of the Semantic Web still in a few years. Beginning with the Web 2.0 hype, users have started to be interested in “educating” web, i.e., typically tagging. This is an important initative for the Semantic Web. But the ideal Semantic Web as dreamed by TimBL is still 1000 miles away at this moment. And the worst, we have only just invented bicycle. But as you have said, we are on the right track. It is only a matter of time.
Yihong
[...] Yesterday’s post provoked a rather aggressive response from Tantek Çelik, leader of the Microformats community. [...]
CSS has been adopted so slowly because as with everything, it’s not the School that leads it’s the Culture, it’s the other way around. All that is needed for the Semantic Web to ‘cross over’ is one very popular application. If MySpace (for example) were to rewrite their site to be RDF based, overnight the Web would suddenly have about 200,000,000 users and their interconnections SemWeb-ized, creating a marketplace for the development of new applications that use these standards. This is also a good example because when the Semantic Web takes off, it’s going to be the youngsters that comprise the market that will continue to drive the best innovations in the WWW user experience of the future, not the geniuses and geeks that have built the specs that ultimately will make it all possible.
Unfortunately, MySpace, the most popular social networking service, which houses the biggest social network ever, makes its money by NON-distribution of that data. They sell eyeballs to advertisers, so distributed networking is inherently contrary to their business model.
An approach like what SIOC is aiming for, “Semantically Interlinking Online Communities,” is probably what will induce the big shift to Semantic Web practices.
What is needed is users, so there will be a place for the next wave to take place.
Sorry about the typo. Darn copy-n-paste drafting!
[...] The issue has recently been vigorously discussed by Ian Davis with comments by Tantek Çelik, and a and a thoughtful detailed rejoinder by Ian. [...]
[...] Anyways, please don’t take my first paragraph too seriously, especially when I am working with XML (Atom) and debugging database calls for my day job, but I will say I remain hopeful to see us take a real step forward into a richer Web. However, I’ll still say that we must be careful with our expectations because these companies are building specific applications after years of research and work that are not easily duplicated as a cool AJAX script today. In other words, their work might help people clear up their misconceptions about the Semantic Web and the range of possibilities that exist today with data, but not necessarily will empower average Joe HTML Writer right away to do what they can do in the so-called Web 2.0. But don’t fret either, Ian says we have a few more years to go…These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]