Naturally, the concept of the Semantic Web has drawn criticisms as well as praise. Some, such as Clay Shirky, question whether the Semantic Web is at all feasible in the way Berners-Lee envisioned it around a decade ago. Shirky argues that the Semantic Web is based around syllogisms that allow for completely erroneous conclusions to be drawn from combining data (Shirky). However, one could argue that his examples, such as concluding Romania isn't real from statements about the location of Transylvania and vampires being mere myths, are more of an argument that we should be wary of which kinds of data we combine than a reason to decry the whole idea. Secondly, Shirky argues both that semantics can be achieved through the use of ordinary XHTML, like RSS autodiscovery, and that many forms of data require an agreement to store the data a certain way or to at least have a given type of data in one system map one-to-one to a type of data in another system (Shirky). These are more difficult problems to deal with. The appeal of simplicity is certainly not what comes to mind when thinking about XML and RDF schemas. A lot of functionality can be achieved via microformats using simple, existing XHTML tags. Secondly, Shirkey also points out that people have a hard time agreeing on how data should be stored. His example of the Dewey decimal system and the Soviet library's cataloging system is very justified. The two systems don't map onto each other at all above the level of individual books. Therefore, when combining data from resources like this, all categorization information above the level at which the two systems agree is effectively meaningless.
Even with its criticism and yet to be solved problems, the Semantic Web is still poised to make a major impact on the world we live in. Social networking, the current revolution in Web technology, is beginning to feel its effects. Facebook's implementation of the hCard and hCalendar microformats allows for users to easily link their calendar programs with their events on Facebook, while FOAF seeks to make the entire social network portable between websites. Scientific research could be and is being made more efficient through the use of Semantic Web technologies. Federated search engines like WorldWideScience pull relevant scientific papers from all over the Web. Raw data stores are becoming more widely available and could allow for creative new ways of combining data and discovering new correlations and large-scale patterns that are too big to be detected with small sample sizes. Finally, thought parts of the medical field lag behind in making appropriate use electronics and computers for data storage, the Semantic Web is having a huge impact. Programs like SAPPHIRE will shape the way medical research and treatments is done, focusing not just on the body and other immediately available information, but also on the environment from which that patient comes and their family history and the real-time data that might indicate a rise in the number of cases similar to the current patient in recent weeks that prompts further investigations and ends up stopping an epidemic before it starts. The Semantic Web is in a position to be the next Web revolution, even if never fully realized as the accessible, massive, distributed database envisioned a decade ago. The relatively small implementations in place today are already having a huge impact and continued investment in and proliferation of Semantic Web technologies stands to drive humanity's advancement and efficiency for decades to come.
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'The Semantic Web' by Conrad Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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