#RSS Home Verizon's BroadbandAccess EVDO sucks Floyd Landis and the powermeter era web stats script Hey Norton! - Ken Norton's Blog « Verizon's BroadbandAccess EVDO sucks | Main | Floyd Landis and the powermeter era » July 19, 2006 Peter Norvig challenges TBL and the Semantic Web UPDATE: Somehow I neglected to reference the CNET story in my original post. Sorry about that. I've always been skeptical of the Semantic Web vision and have shared my enthusiasm for a sloppier, more pragmatic approach to metadata. To me, the Semantic Web has always stank like a deluded academic pipe dream incompatible with the realities of the web. Google's Peter Norvig - who despite being a nice guy wrote the book on artificial intelligence - challenged Tim Berners-Lee at an AAAI conference: "What I get a lot is: 'Why are you against the Semantic Web?' I am not against the Semantic Web. But from Google's point of view, there are a few things you need to overcome, incompetence being the first," Norvig said. Norvig clarified that it was not Berners-Lee or his group that he was referring to as incompetent, but the general user. "We deal with millions of Web masters who can't configure a server, can't write HTML. It's hard for them to go to the next step. The second problem is competition. Some commercial providers say, 'I'm the leader. Why should I standardize?' The third problem is one of deception. We deal every day with people who try to rank higher in the results and then try to sell someone Viagra when that's not what they are looking for. With less human oversight with the Semantic Web, we are worried about it being easier to be deceptive," Norvig said. It's refreshing to see Google bringing some reality to a debate that's largely been framed by academics (not us "practitioners" as they're fond of saying). Tim is a brilliant man but I really think he's gone down the rabbit hole with this one. As I've said before, there are humans at both ends of the rope and humans bring with them all of their glorious flaws and foibles. 03:43 PM | Permalink Comments Post a comment Name: ____________________ Email Address: ____________________ URL: ____________________ [_] Remember personal info? Comments: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ Preview Post These opinions are mine alone and don't necessarily represent those of my employer. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. Get a JotSpot wiki My Photo Syndicate this site Feedburner About Ken Norton Recent Posts * Voting daze * Apartheid's "Great Crocodile" dies * I'm a Googler now * Subterfuge and the art of the demo * The art of the phone screen * Clueful * Dead letter office * CNET TV: Everything old is new again Archives * November 2006 * October 2006 * September 2006 * August 2006 * July 2006 * June 2006 * May 2006 * April 2006 * March 2006 * February 2006 * January 2006 * December 2005 * November 2005 * October 2005 * September 2005 * August 2005 * July 2005 * June 2005 * May 2005 * April 2005 Most Popular * User triangulation: how to listen to customers * The time I flew on the Enron corporate jet to meet Jeff Skilling * How to hire a product manager * Lifehack: how to stop biting your nails Recent Comments Seven Star Hand (LW Page) wrote Hey Ken, Here's my two bits on this intrac... more Jamie wrote congrats Ken, this is great news. can't wait ... more Mike Carrato wrote Hey, congratulations! That's great news! Man,... more Jeremy Zawodny wrote I'm late to the party, but was spending most ... more Joe FitzGerald wrote Congrats Ken, from a blast from your past -- ... more Joel Toledano wrote Congrats, Ken! Now you've worked both sides ... more Pratap Whig wrote Congratulations! This is a great win for you.... more Mark Schlagenhauf wrote Congratulations! That's very cool.... more pinano wrote great work!... more John Roberts wrote So, the tour of the Internet's landmark compa... more