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@enkiv2@niu.moe I feel like the idea of an 'universal information browser' is still a good and important one, but less and less that the HTML/HTTP/Javascript based Web is the right form for that universal browser.

@natecull @enkiv2 the Semantic web was a good idea, we should re-embrace it.

Nate Cull (.social)

@ajroach42 @enkiv2@niu.moe I think the Semantic Web is a great *idea*, I'm just not 100% sold on the specific technologies Berners-Lee chose to implement it in, either.

RDF in particular looks better the further away from it you are

@enkiv2@niu.moe @ajroach42

But definitely my intuitive longing is, and has been for about 10 years, for something semantic-y, in the sense of a 'giant linked space of data in which I can store and retrieve really fine-grained facts that reference each other'

@natecull @ajroach42 @enkiv2 "Semantic" is a good idea. "Web" not so much.
SGML even worse.

@natecull @ajroach42 @enkiv2 Almost two decades on I think it's possible to safely conclude that the semantic web as conceived by TBL and implemented in RDF was a failure.

@bob @enkiv2@niu.moe @ajroach42

I think we can measure the magnitude of that failure by how many times since some of the Semantic Web's core ideas have been reinvented by others trying to solve the same problem.

Microformats, Linked Data, Open Graph Protocol etc.

Everyone wants some kind of graph, but 'let's use RDF' is always last on the list.

@natecull @bob @enkiv2 @ajroach42 odd to focus on failure, i never saw the Semantic Web as exclusively tied to RDF (Turtle was co-promoted from very early - format was secondary, and frankly JSON-LD shows the problem is annoying to generally encode), for the better part of a decade Linked Data has been the mantle. Dbpedia and ActivityPub are here despite the failure?

@ajroach42 @enkiv2 @bob @natecull This isn't a radical defense of SW, but an alternate observation. LD is entirely of the same community, and after losing my attention for a few years I've recently been pleased to see the fruits of the SW era continue to show up in various eg JSON-LD formats relevant today.

@loppear It's probably a glass full, empty glass kind of thing.
I can see all the good things that have been achieved. I am also painfully aware of all the great things that could have been done but weren't, and aware of all the promises broken, and failures of the last 20 years. It doesn't mean that I'm not aware that some good things exist, it means that I think we have the potential to do so much better that it's painful to witness what our hopes have become.

@ajroach42 @enkiv2 @bob @natecull

@natecull
In a way, that's the best way to be optimistic, right? To believe that things are necessarily going to be better because we're going to make them better.

@bob @enkiv2 @ajroach42 @loppear

@h @natecull @bob @enkiv2 @ajroach42 agreed, if say OGP for social media cards or schema.org for reviews in search are examples of success it is very shallow, given the rich available and documented dreams of derived layered knowledge.

@loppear That makes me think that we didn't do a good job on some levels. A number of levels. And it's rich of people who use the moniker "web science" to tout such great achievements promoting their work to the category of a separate science distinct from computer science and mathematics. It probably helps to get good grants though.

@ajroach42 @enkiv2 @bob @natecull