New, Improved *Semantic* Web!

New Improved Semantic Web: Now with added meaning! More machine processable than before. May be incompatible with existing XML tools. Databases may take up to ten times as much memory and 24 hours to load.

Picture taken from Mark Butlers presentation "Is the semantic web hype?" Hewlett Packard labs presentation at Manchester Metropolitan University. Conceived by Mark Butler and drawn by Rachel Murphy of Rude Girl Designs. Reproduced here with kind permission from Mark Butler.

See also Google and the Semantic, Satanic, Romantic Web. Does anyone, apart from a small (but vocal) gang of fools and fanatics, think it will actually ever work on a realistic scale on the Web? Even if the semantic web vapourware does ever materialise, the idea isn't that novel or interesting, forget "Web 2.0", its more "Databases 2.0". The basic idea is something along the lines of "If we describe things using ontologies, they will be easier to find and integrate". Wowee, what an incredibly ground-breaking risky earth-shattering piece of so-called "Science". Maybe I'm missing something.

The more interesting idea, of artificially intelligent machines that "know what you mean" and perform tasks on your behalf is still a long long way off. See also the Semantic Web Stack