> again the overriding belief that the lowest common denominator is the only function worth serving. again refusing the challenge of doing better outright, & opting into only believing in worse. you've started off by excluding all use cases except the worst one.
I feel that you are mis-stating my position.
> this is a stunning conclusion which i am still working to recover from
Ffs, melodramatic much?
> here's google's docs for how to implement semantic web today. i'm pretty sure most of the lower quartile of developers i've worked with (still not a terrible lot) could get something ok going on an existing project in half a day, based on this.
To be clear, i think most could do even the original rdf if they so desired. My argument is not that they are literally incapable, but that their interests are not aligned with doing so (replace incompetent with lazy if it makes you feel better)
> we sacrifice nothing by working for better. we can make our information better, easily, at little cost to us & none to the lower users, & we can over time find & create a wide range of tools that dont just search, but which generally improve the user experience, in a range of ways. when pages take the step of marking up their contents in machine readable ways, we enable more possibilities, more diversification, more possible flourishing.
We sacrafice opportunity cost. Time spent working on things with unsolved problems and no plan for conceievably solving them is time that can be better spent on solutions that are actually practical (or could be spent on solving those unsolved problems). But by all means anyone who thinks they can make it work, should go make cool things.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't work on semantic web - just that if they do, they should work on solving norvig's complaints or try to make them inapplicable to the specific niche they are working on.
> again i think there's some very abstract words
I don't understand how you are using abstract in this sentence or how my previous comment was abstract.
> picking up the crudest typecast of bad operators one can reach for, & using that to browbeat those who want to try better, more advanced, is what i described as a low bog
Then you should make the argument that the few are sufficient. There's plenty of technologies where you don't need everyone on board. Semantic web as originally envisioned seems like one where you do. If you disagree that you do, this is a good place to attack peter's argument.
> whatever truth there are to peter's views, the world ought try to be better. a better hypermedia is more likely to, in the long run, breed better hypermediaists.
I agree, but we should work on things that are practical given the constraints we have or figure out ways to remove those constraints. Running head first into a known wall, pretending it isn't there, doesn't solve anything.
To give an example - take gnutella vs bittorrent. Gnutella had a problem that many participants were selfish peers (downloaded but didn't upload). If we just said that selfish peers were "bad operators" and we should ignore them in favour of the people who are good, we would be stuck with gnutella. Instead, bit torrent came along, recognized the issue, created the tit-for-tat algorithm, which changed the social dynamics, overcoming the problem.
> ok so this time you're willing to possibly entertain my notion- not assuming everyone is incompetent & goning to be unable to manage it-
That's not my notion. My notion is that people do what is in their personal best interest, and a significant (but not universal) portion have interests that differ from what would be good for a hypothetical semantic web.
In my view, in order for semantic we to suceed you need to either shift the social dynamics so that more operators interests align with what is good for the semantic web, or you need to make the semantic web more robust to misaligned interests. Preferably both.
> activitypub is showing the value of extensible, interlinked structured data, is a hotbed of neat social systems & apps & decentralizations. the js libraries have only recently got good, got modern, but they have; that's a subtle but promising sign to me, a form of success.
I think this is an interesting example, because it modifies the vision of the semantic web just enough to address norvig's points.
Its an isolated system - you don't need the world to use it, just the people you want to follow.
Incompetence is again fixed by only having people who want to participate participate. Additionally most participants use something like mastadon, so dont have to implement it themselves.
Similiarly, there are tools to deal with spam, as well as procedures like requiring invites or admin approval to join.
If anything, i think this is tge exception that proves the validity of norvig's argument. The semantic web doesn't work due to norvig's reasons. Modify the idea slightly to address those reasons, and suddenly it works great.
> but mostly disbelief & scorn has carried the day against the semantic web, kept it from accruing even the slow-burning background interest i think it deserves
When has disbelief & scorn ever actually kept a good technology down? Scorn tends to go away the moment the tech does something valuable to someone (for exame, take drop box).
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To conclude, i think you're defining the semantic web differently than how Norvig is.
Could something related to but not quite the same as the original vision of the semantic web take off? sure definitely. Your example of activitypub is a good one in my mind.
Could the original vision of the semantic web take off - i don't think so unless it fixes its incentive problem.
Of course if someone creates it and it works, i would be happy to be proven wrong.