Raw

Matt May notes from WWW 2004 keynote: Tim Berners-Lee, can't remember seeing this, definitely want to refer back later. Some bits re. adoption:

Tim suggests a few ideas for bootstrapping a Semantic Web project. Put things together from data, not by marking things up in RDF by hand. Don't change existing systems over to RDF immediately, but try some RDF adapters. Try combining data from existing systems that haven't been connected. Then try running rules on them, or explore the data using OWL to find relationships you may not have known before. The challenge here is to show the 'first genuinely serendipitous associations' of data.

He challenges academics and industry people to learn how to speak each other's language to bridge the Semantic Web's culture gap.

This is sweet:

Tim puts forward the idea of an RDF clipboard that can determine the rules in disparate domains (e.g., dragging your bank statement onto the calendar) and having it figure out how to reconcile that in the interface (showing your purchases in a given time frame).

What's interesting is that we more or less already have the kit needed for this: RDF stores presenting a domain-specific view of the data (bank, calendar). Transferring data between such stores is straightforward (simple matter of programming). But the UI clipboard paradigm makes for something elegantly user-friendly. Must think on this one.

(via RdfClipboard on the ESW Wiki, via CaptSolo on the #swig chump…)

[Danny]