We are the Platform, My Friends

October 20th, 2007

From Talis, in coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit session on "semantics" comes this from Danny Hillis:

Don't necessarily characterise our stuff as Semantic Web. The Semantic Web was a particular case of a way to try to do things a few years ago.

Well, thank goodness we got the Semantic Web out of the way, and can now buckle down to the real work of building web operating systems, social graphs, excuse me, semantic graphs, and platforms. Especially platforms. As Hillis also stated, WE are the Platform. 


  
    
        


I've paid my dues -
Time after time -
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime -
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face -
But I've come through

We are the Platform - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end -
We are the Platform -
We are the Platform
No time for losers
'Cause we are the Platform - of the Web
Comments
1
Paul Miller - 10:32 am 10/20/2007

Freddie Mercury would have been proud… :-)

Paul

2
Bud Gibson - 1:08 pm 10/20/2007

I realize that I should probably not take this post seriously, but you've struck a cord. Stephen Downes has made the case that all of our relationships are semantic.

From what I've seen, the truth of the matter is that they are all local, and to a fault so. If you look at any a-list blog grouping, you see it is all people who hang-out or have hung out together. Scoble used to actually work for Winer. Winer and Doc Searls see each other all the time. People travel to conferences to meet and congregate. Paul Graham of Y Combinator insists that people relocate to work with him.

Research shows that mere physical proximity for a brief period causes people to think of themselves as a group.

So, I'm for the simpler "Who're you hanging with these days?"

On a side note, I would like a resizeable comment box.

3
Shelley - 1:39 pm 10/20/2007

I think so, Paul. The song came to mind the instant I saw those words.

Bud, I think we're in serious danger of overusing the word, "semantics". If you're saying relationships are meaningful, true, and agree. But semantics from a tech perspective, really is more about communicating meaning than recording or even observing meaning. If that make sense. My opinion, etc.

Resizeable comment box: nope, I've probably tweaked the comments as much as I'm going to.

4
Charles - 11:21 pm 10/20/2007

Hillis tried to do the Semantic Web back in the days of Gopher and the CM2. That's more than "a few years ago." It's the same old whine in new bottles.

5
Simon Reinhardt - 1:17 pm 10/21/2007

Off-topic@sic: seems like Danny prefers British spellings. ;-)

6
Shelley - 1:33 pm 10/21/2007

Charles, I got the impression he meant the initial interest in RDF et al.

Paul wrote the post, Simon, and I imagine he is from the UK.

7
Bud Gibson - 6:17 pm 10/21/2007

Shelley, I guess a problem I see is trying to disentangle meaning from its social underpinnings, after all:

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field;

I do understand that, in computer science, one deals in a logical realm, but that realm is created by man.

BTW, the citation can be found here.

8
Web 2.0 Summit - reflections after a trans-Atlantic flight and a day off! | moraaz.org - feed all tech! - 3:15 pm 11/30/2007

[…] with me. I found Danny Hillis' explicit distancing of himself from the Semantic Web odd (Shelley just found it funny…); I'll admit that I've done a little of the same, but more to demonstrate that there is […]

Thanks to all those who have contributed to the discussion. Comments are now closed, but you can contact the author of the post directly.

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