"No Semantic Web until the Incentive Problem and the Trust Problem are solved."
No. The semweb is already functional as is (see my other comments here). Trust is orthogonal and can/is being solved in different ways (centralized/decentralized as in Wikidata/ORCIDs/org-ID-URIs).
"However, like many visions that project future benefits but ignore present costs, it requires too much coordination and too much energy to effect in the real world" ... Wikipedia, Wikidata, OpenStreetMaps, Archive.org, ORCID science-journal stores, and the thousands of other open linked-data platforms are proofing Clay wrong each day. He has not been relevant for a long time IMHO. Semweb > tag-taxonomies.
Many of the biggest companies in world are using semweb tech: http://sparql.club
Open linked-data has been growing very fast over the last few years. Many governments are now demanding LD from their executive/subsidized organizations. These data stores are then made accessible using REST and/or SPARQL.
They do it because it benefits them too. OpenStreetMaps links with WD, GLAMs link with WD, journals/ORCIDs link with WD, all sorts of other data archives link with WD. Whoever is not linking with may see a crawler pass by to collect license-free facts.
Also, I just checked: WebMD is using a ton of embedded RDF on each page. They understand SEO well as you said :)
Why are people editing Wikipedia and Wikidata? What would it bring you if your products were globally linked to that knowledge graph and Google's machines would understand that metadata from the tiny JSON-LD snippet on each page? The tools are here already, the tech is evolving still, but the knowledge graph concept is going to affect web shop owners too soon enough.
Wikidata is already providing a nearly globally accepted store of concept IDs. Wikipedia adds a lot of depth to this knowledge graph too.
Schema.org has become very popular and Google is backing this project. Wordpress and others are already using it.
Governments are requiring not just "open data", but also "open linked-data" (which can then be ingested into a SPARQL engine), because they want this data to be usable across organizations.
The financial industry are moving to the FIBO ontology, and on and on...
- SPARQL is _a lot better_ than the many different forms of SQL.
- Adding some JSON-LD can be done through simple JSON metadata. Something people using Wordpress are already able to do. All this will be more and more automated.
- The benefit is ontological cohesion across the whole web. Please take a look at the https://conze.pt project and see what this can bring you. The benefit is huge. Simple integration with many different stores of information in a semantically precise way.
2) AI/NLP is never completely precise and requires huge resources (which require centralization). The basics of the semantic web will be based on RDF (whether created through some AI or not), SPARQL, ontologies and extended/improved by AI/NLP. Its a combination of the two that is already being used for Wikipedia and Wikidata search results.
Whether you trust the URIs or the data that was placed there is not a problem for the semantic web. The fact that you _can_ state these things and relate to other resources and concepts on the web is already wonderful and useful in itself. Google is reading this metadata and relating it to their trust/ranking-graph. The semantic web 'community' could do the same later also, in a more decentralized way (blockhain web IDs perhaps?). For now it all works fine.
I'm building a front end app for Wikipedia & Wikidata called Conzept encyclopedia (https://conze.pt) based on semantic web pillars (SPARQL, URIs, various ontologies, etc.) and loving it so far.
The semantic web is not dead, its just slowly evolving and and growing. Last week I implemented JSON-LD (RDF embedded in HTML with a schema.org ontology), super easy and now any HTTP client can comprehend what any page is about automatically.
See https://twitter.com/conzept__ for many examples what Conzept can already do. You won't see many other apps do these things, and certainly not in a non-semantic-web way!
The future of the semantic web is in: much more open data, good schemas and ontologies for various domains, better web extensions understanding JSON-LD, more SPARQL-enabled tools, better and more lightweight/accessible NLP/AI/vector compute (preferably embedded in the client also), dynamic computing using category theory foundations (highly interactive and dynamic code paths, let the computer write logic for you), ...
Just tried it out. Looks nice (except for that unremovable crypto button on the toolbar), but I need SpeechSynthesis (TTS) support. Will stay with FF and use MS Edge for its excellent TTS.
The search engine is pretty weak judging from my initial queries.
“The purpose of life is not to be [superficially] happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” - R.W. Emerson
“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller
“Through love alone can man find the kingdom of heaven for which he has sought since his beginnings. Only through living love as a principle can he find the happiness, peace and prosperity which lie in his heart as the greatest of his desires.” - Walter Russell
For a quick glance at some of the highlights of what the Conzept encyclopedia can do with Wikipedia topics, see my Twitter posts:
https://twitter.com/conzept__
Yes, that would be very interesting. To "spatialize" all this knowledge and edutainment into something even more immersive, fun and social. Just having a simple VR/AR image-gallery viewing mode for the Wikipedia article images would already be a useful start, then just keep going from there with more "spatializing" components. If someone wants to help create such an image-gallery viewer for Conzept in eg. A-Frame let me know (can be an opensource web-component project which gets embedded). For full spatialization there would need to be some Conzept API I think.
Did not even know that was a thing people do. Middle-mouse-click will work for opening links in new tabs. I will see if I can add an handler for this. Thanks!
Thanks! I spend a lot of time tweaking the UX. Its not easy to build a fluid and fast experience (especially on mobile).
The user base is still small, which is fine, as there are still many small issues to fix. I'm having a lot of fun developing this and hearing the feedback of users.
I started the project mostly for myself, to have a more integrated topic exploration tool, but things grew to also be of use to others. I think the main use case is just learning about topics of personal interest. I would like to experiment with some social features in the future (eg. ephemeral audio chat for topics).
Its just me (Jama Poulsen) currently. I hope at some point to be able to work with more people on this project and also to have a base for other archives / institutions (as a B2B product and service) to use the "Conzept UI" for their knowledge base. The Conzept framework is already pretty generalized, multi-lingual and customizable, but more needs to be done. I'm aiming to be able to do a first pilot at the end of the year (or later, depending on the progress). Feel free to send me a message if someone is interested in this.
There will be better user documentation coming (the current guide is a bit dated). Still thinking how to make that more modular, UI-integratable and maintainable.
The whole main app design and UI is from scratch, but many embedded apps are developed by others (I've been donating to some of them for their great work, but more needs to be done here IMHO). No papers or anything on all that currently.