Radio, XML, and the semantic web

How I do I know the semantic web will happen? Because it's what people want. We've had a taste of what happens when structured data is reflected back to us in useful ways on the web. We can organize our lives, buy stuff, and learn things, in ways we dreamed of a decade ago but didn't imagine we'd live to see.

We create vastly more data, in less structured form, every day as we live, work, and communicate. We're only now in the early stages of looping that data back through the web to achieve similar benefits. So of course Radio isn't the endgame. Radio, like the broader movement it's part of, empowers people, not just IT and media organizations, to create these information loops. My point is exactly that Radio's appropriate use of XML makes this possible. It puts XML's power into the hands of users without clobbering them over the head with XML's advanced features and complexity. It helps us get to critical mass. Nothing puzzling about that. Nothing more important, either.


Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/04/19.html#a200