A semantic web? Surely that’s overcooked. It’s too elaborate, time consuming and assumes knowledge can be stitched together by computers in the same way that we create knowledge as humans. Are we like computers? We deal with information in very different ways, and our brains aren’t simply ‘processors’; they create new knowledge based on existing knowledge and the interaction of ideas (developing socially and cultural over time); emotion; psychological make up and background environment.

A web where we can find things maybe? Groogle claims that it wants to ‘organise the world’s knowledge’. Is this a good thing to commodify the sum total of human ideas into the property of a multi-national corporation? And more basically, can they do it?

Examples and experience. I’ve just spent an hour looking for a book which I thought had some combination of the keywords ‘war’ ‘marxism’ ‘marxist’. Could I find it using search strings such as:

marxist theory of war
marxism and the second world war
marxism /t war

Nope. BUT! When I typed in the search string ‘two volume history of marxism and war’ (without the quote marks) lo and behold, up it pops.

It’s a shame basic metadata has never taken hold - partly because of the contamination of nastiness that spammers, spoofers and cyber anti-socials cause, partly because it always seems to over-complicated (in its full glory). But the use, and control of keywords would surely help with searching. Wouldn’t this be easier than chasing the ’semantic web’ or the alternative of throwing up 2 million hits when searching?

Basic metadata - attainable, but not yet achieved.