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Tim O'Reilly has a follow up to his Metaweb post, My "Outdated View" of the Semantic Web. Snippet:

Just to be clear, I've always loved the vision of the Semantic Web. But much of the early work at the W3C always seemed to me to be a case of premature standardization, which is why I've stayed away from it...

Recently Mark Pilgrim commented on a Sam Ruby post:

I haven’t thought about RDF in quite a while, and apparently the big news while I was gone is that people like Danny have figured out that they’re going to have to pay the RDF tax themselves...

I'm sure I've seen a few other similar statements around the blogosphere recently. What they have in common is a subtle but maybe significant shift in position on the Semantic Web. The door is (cautiously) open again. 

So, how to change a lightbulb? Web2.0 has taught us metadata doesn't have to be metacrap, and the Worldview covered by semweb tech has evolved beyond syllogisms...