[tlug] Effect of AI and data processing rift on the Semantic Web

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Edward Middleton writes:

 > This[1] is an interesting post about the historical division between the 
 > data processing and AI camps, and discusses how it has negatively 
 > effected the development of the semantic web.

The semantic web was never going anywhere anyway, IMHO.  The WWW
itself is a natural outgrowth of instantiating Ted Nelson's Xanadu
insight (principally hypertext) on the foundation of the Internet.
Why has this worked?  Because of the IETF's traditional "build on best
practices" approach to standards.  In other words, it works *because
it works*.  We don't need to know more than that, really.

The semantic web, on the other hand, was conceived by a bunch of
philosophers who want it to reflect their theories.  It could work,
but only by accident, and that accident has to involve the rest of the
world.

AI, on the other hand, actually works and is used all over the place.
But its reputation has suffered from the inverse of Clarke's Law:[1]

Any sufficiently familiar magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Footnotes: 
[1]  Please don't quote this, as I'm not satisfied with this
formulation yet. ;-)