Re: [ontolog-forum] Inventor of the Web Gets Backing to Build Web of Dat

[Cameron Ross <cross@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For me, its not about whether or not to invest in R&D... clearly we need to do this.  Rather, its about what to invest in.

Cameron

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Pavithra <pavithra_kenjige@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dr. Sowa,

With all due respect: 

I agree that google launched a successful product and is making billions.   So did Microsoft!   But those students or techies who are slogging in those product companies were educated in those universities that had few hundred or couple of million dollars in research funding..

Federal government let go of $32B in taxes for Citigroup for 2009!   I was sitting and thinking about what an university could do with that kind of money... 32 billion dollars!  It is a rich man's game!  So what is $32m compare to $32 Billion!

Government spends money in many ways... some of them of use and some of them ... well...  flushing down the toilet..


But when government spends money on educational institute and scientific research, it is never a waste. In fact, it is a vested in interest in humanity...

Regards,
Pavithra




--- On Wed, 3/24/10, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Inventor of the Web Gets Backing to Build Web of Data
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 8:29 AM

Following is an article with the above title:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/inventor_of_the_web_gets_backing_to_build_web_of_d.php

But I have more sympathy with the article with the title below.

As I have commented in various notes, I had misgivings about the
proposal by Pat C to build a foundation ontology with $30 million.
I have more misgivings about flushing £30 million down a toilet
that has already received more than its fair share of funding.

For comparison, note that Google was founded by a few graduate
students around the same time that Tim B-L published his book
on the Semantic Web.  But Google has generated multi-billions
in revenue, while governments are still pouring millions into
attempts to get the SW off the ground.

Re ontologies:  I believe that they are important.  But as I said
many times, the current SW technology is mostly a rehash of ideas
from the 1970s and '80s.  If it's not yet strong enough to compete
on its own, it's time to look for better alternatives.

John Sowa
________________________________________________________________________

Greatest Living Briton gets £30m for 'web science'

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/22/semantic_web_tbl/

As an alliance of the desperate, this one takes some beating. The
Greatest Living Briton (Sir Timothy Berners Lee) has been thrown £30m of
taxpayers' money for a new institute to research "web science"...

It's really a confluence of two groups of people with a shared interest
in bureaucracy. Computer Science is no longer about creating graduates
who can solve engineering challenges, but about generating work for the
academics themselves. The core expertise of a CompSci department today
is writing funding applications. And the Holy Grail for these paper
chasers is a blank cheque for work which can be conducted without
scrutiny for years to come. With its endless committees defining
standards (eg, "ontologies", "folksonomies") that no one will ever use,
the "Semantic Web" fits the bill perfectly...

The beauty of the "semantic web" - unworkable in anything other than a
small, tightly controlled context - is that it will be years before
anyone notices. By which time "Web Science" departments will have
flourished all over the land, and billions more will have been spent
trying to make Big Government small...


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