Here's an interesting piece of fantasy from Ftrain. It's written from the perspective of a business writer in 2009 when Google has far surpassed any other Internet company in profitability thanks to introducing semantic web services into their search technology. Some of it is amusing fiction, but for the most part, the author makes a lot of sense and has some great, realistic ideas. His descriptions of Google's services and growth through the fictional years are fascinating.
Posted by at December 13, 2002 07:43 PM | TrackBackHmm...lets try this again. Somehow my original comment on this piece got lost in the digital void...
I really liked this article, mostly because it touched upon the need for security. I love the idea of the semantic web and the ease that it will (hopefully) bring to our digital lives. But I already have issues with the amount of information that is stored out there about me, and everything I read makes me believe that since it will be easier than ever to share this information, it will also be much harder for individuals to keep control over what information is available for others to see.
The examples illustrating the trust principles also caused me to think - what happens if the entities that we trust are wrong? We've all been in situations where instutions that we have entrusted with some aspect of our lives just plain messed up. How will situations like this be handled and resolved? The problem I see is that these trusts appear to be blindly followed by programs, not having the reasoning ability of the human brain to say "Yes, I trust you, but in this one case, your facts are wrong".
Posted by: JonathanD on December 16, 2002 10:00 PM