The Semantic Advantage

Recent Publications

The Idiot Savant of Search

The Internet is a smelly, leering idiot savant who remembers everything but can't tell you what's important. Just sits there farting and belching until you ask a question in a way that he understands it. Except he doesn't understand your question at all. He just recognizes that your question has some of the same superficial properties of language as stuff in his memory. When he's done remembering, he vomits results. On you.
 
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 “Sarkozy bites Obama child”: A commentary on the benefits and distractions of the Semantic Web

For all its potential value, the Semantic Web could stall rapid economic progress by distracting us from the more critical goal of making work better and more productive. The Semantic Web focuses on making information more “meaningful” and more directly accessible by software applications. That sounds great. Heck, it is great. But making the meaning in vast amounts of information out there more accessible is only one challenge in the Information Age and, I would argue, it is not the most important challenge.

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