Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Taking a Stand on the Semantic Web (03 Sep 2004) Sometimes I wonder about the stands I take. I was recently on a panel at the World Wide Web Conference that posed the provocative question: "Will the Semantic Web Scale?" I agreed to assume the contrarian position. "No, of course not." It was roughly comparable to being an atheist in a Southern Baptist tent revival. Members of the audience were popping up and down as if the hotel chairs were designed by William Castle (who, as you recall, installed electrified theater seats for his 1959 classic, The Tingler); you could hear the frantic key-tapping of wireless IM-ing; some W3C people were smirking; Tim Berners-Lee was frowning. The consensus was: "That chick just doesn't get it." The obvious analogy was trotted out: "Some people didn't see that the Web was going to take off. This proves that the Semantic Web will take off despite your criticism, which is so lacking in insight that I can only snort derisively." But to me, the Semantic Web can best be viewed as a product you'd see advertised on late-night TV, much like the Flowbee haircutting system, which "uses the suction power of your household vacuum to draw the hair up to the desired length, and then gives it a perfect cut every time." Even given the pitchman's confidence and his well-mown Smokey and the Bandit-style hair, one is forced to ask oneself: "Will it really work? Who needs it? Is it safe?" Article URL: http://tekka.net/06/?Semantic Read 60 more articles from Tekka sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Transforming the User Interface     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy