I’m not sure whether I find it funny or depressing that people think AI is more realistic than the Semantic Web in the near future.

The most frustrating thing about criticisms of the Semantic Web is how rarely they’re based on an actual understanding of the idea. Just read any Slashdot thread on the subject - the same misunderstandings have been cropping up for years (it’s better metadata for traditional web pages, it’s AI, it’s WS, it’s using CSS instead of tables…).

There’s a serious PR problem here. I agree with Seth that it’s important to focus on short term goals; just get computer-readable data on the web. It breaks my heart to think of all the Web’s databases excreting nothing but meaningless blobs of HTML.

To the post that kicked up all the fuss:

The future of the web will be based on personal computing.

I hope you’re right, but I don’t think that spells doom for the Semantic Web. The opposite, in fact - it’s very easy for walled gardens to combine multiple sources of data in interesting ways. To achieve the same thing without centralisation requires something that looks very much like the Semantic Web.