People should all reread the essay 'Metacrap' once in a while about this.

https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm

However, metadata is really useful in some contexts. Say you have a huge collection of scientific data from a particle accelerator, astronomy database, satellite imagery or sensors.

How do you set that up for search?

How do you make it worthwhile for academics to release data like this and get credit as they do for writing a paper?

How do you have provenance for derived data?

How do you set up a unique identifier so the data can be referenced and found as required?

You have data about the data. You have metadata. If you're smart you standardize it and bingo. You have a use for metadata.

CERN uses OPC UA for ops-level organization and integration in the large:

https://kt.cern/technologies/quasar-framework-opc-ua-server-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPC_Unified_Architecture

https://opcfoundation.org/about/opc-technologies/opc-ua/

The information model is quite flexible, and not tied to any specific platform... but it's not for the faint of heart.

Semantic web is not that hard to understand. But facebook/google/etc will NEVER adopt it. They are not interested in opening (meta)data in highly precise and machine readable form to 3rd parties. So the only adopters are geeks/scientists.

I can see where you're coming from, and your point of view is certainly not baseless, but I just thought I'd point out that at least Google has pushed for the development and adoption of linked data formats like JSON-LD [0] and standardized vocabularies like schema.org [1]. They make use of it for "knowledge graph" [2] features, as well as in Gmail for what they call "actions and highlights" [3] (things like displaying flight reservation details, for instance).

[0] https://json-ld.org/

[1] https://schema.org/

[2] https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/

[3] https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/getting-started

Yes, Google would love for you to mark up your data so that they can better consume it. But good luck trying to get Google to make any of their data more interoperable. Google Plus, YouTube, Google Photos... they do have somewhat limited APIs, but they are not federated and standardized. Semantic web in, limited proprietary access out. Walled gardens are a business tactic, no semantic web technology can change that.

I think you are correct. Semantic web is a decent technology. It has some rough edges, but it has solved the technical aspect of the data interoperability problem. The only barrier is a social/political/business one: privatizing and monetizing user data is the business model of most of Silicon Valley. I always say that a federated protocol like email would never be adopted today, the business incentives just do not exist.

Don't trust google on metadata recommendations, they change it way too often: https://aaronparecki.com/2016/12/17/8/owning-my-reviews

The W3C docs are very developer unfriendly additionaly there is a significant issue with OWA vs the default mindset of CWA. Also OWL and RFFS not being the type of schema a dev is used to and until very recently no option to actually verify and control the shape of the data (there is SHACL now). Also no sensible examples of using the stack, using FOAF to publish open data isn’t the job for most devs! Finally the rubbish tooling, clunky DBs and only viable option is Java makes the whole thing a quagmire... however it has tons of value if you can get past all that friction, Enterprise Linked Data is an order of magnitude better than alternatives.

> "Nobody understood it."

I don't think the semantic web is hard to understand. The semantic web is a distributed database that everyone can contribute to and access. It allows you to write queries to explore the data on the web, rather than having to browse through it.

For those that are new to the idea of the semantic web, DBpedia is a decent example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBpedia

The BBC website also makes use of semantic web technologies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/technology/software-engineering...

I have to agree - once I was in the not so comfortable position of having to deny funding for this - you don't say no to TBL lightheartedly, but SOLID doesn't offer anything that couldn't be done more simply with existing tools and techniques. It's byzantine and ROI is unclear.

> It's byzantine

How so? Can existing tools achieve the goals that SOLID is trying to deliver?

Distributed is hard, but it's not impossible.

The Whole Internet has become so centralized that it's about due for something to come along that will blow it up and move power back to the edges of the network. That's what happen when mini-computers shattered centralized mainframes, and then when PCs shattered centralized minis. The Internet leveraged all of those PCs to move even farther out to the edge for a time and now it's back to a centralized system again.

You almost sound like the voice of the status quo tech investment establishment. I'm not saying you are, but back in the late 80's we were repeatedly turned down for funding using almost the same language that you're using.

And I agree, from that point of view whatever the next BIG thing that comes along and shatters the existing system will look at first like a bad investment whose ROI is unclear.

I don't know if SOLID is the next big thing or not. From what I've seen from the spec I don't think it's likely. But these ideas which have been around for 20 years are starting to gain traction among the smartest people in the industry.

As Kevin Kelly said, something can be inevitable, but no one knows the form it will take. Distributed is one of those things. We don't know what it will look like when it does take off, but most of the pieces are in place and waiting for the right implementation at the right time to catch fire and move power back to the edge of the network again. ROI will soon follow after that as all of the late comers pile on with the only goal of making money and try to stop others from making money from it. And so the cycle will start again towards centralization again.

Arguments following this pattern are often made to defend technologies: The current state A is bad, and we should aim for state B. Technology X aims for state B, so X is good.

This pattern is fundamentally flawed. X needs to be useful on its own, no further assumptions made. Otherwise it will never get traction, regardless how much we wish B to come true.

Decentralization advocates make lots of specific arguments for advantages they claim it has.

Yes, and rightfully so. But to convince someone that SOLID is the right approach for decentralization, one needs to refer to the specific technology, and to specific use cases where specific user groups have an incentive to switch to it.

We know from the mainly failed P2P wave that just wishing for decentralization is not enough.

Yeah these ideas have been floating around for 20 years. It sounds great in theory, but the devil is in the details. And the whole problem with "owning your data" is that copying data is essentially free. So your only actual recourse is to invoke the power of government, which is unlikely to be on your side versus Google, Facebook, the credit bureaus, and law enforcement.