Every Revolution Needs a Name: The Metaweb…
December 5th, 2003If RSS is ever going to go mainstream, we need a name for this movement that is more consumer-friendly than “the Blogosphere” — and also a name that is not particularly tied to Blogs. RSS and emerging metadata technologies including XML, RDF, DAML+OIL, OWL, etc. should not be linked only to Weblogs. In fact these technologies can be used for so many things — from publishing, to marketing, e-commerce, community, collaboration and even IT-management, supply-chain integration, support, KM, business intelligence, search, and much more we haven’t even imagined yet. That’s why I propose calling this new generation of the Web, “The Metaweb.” The Metaweb isn’t really a new Web, it’s a new meta-layer of the existing Web, and it’s all about metadata. I think we should all start using the term “The Metaweb” to describe it. It certainly is better than “The Semantic Web” — a term that is far to weighted towards far-off goals of AI and agents. Yes, the Metaweb will result in the Semantic Web, but it’s much more near-term. It’s happening NOW. RSS is already here. Weblogs are spreading. Wikis are growing. The Metaweb is alive and growing. This article is proof of that. It’s all about metadata, that’s the key: Making data “smarter.” As the world moves from “dumb data, smart apps” to “smart data, smart apps” we will all benefit from a dramatic improvement in the way information is managed and shared. Information overload comes from “dumb data” not “dumb apps.” By making the data “smarter” we can enable applications to be “smarter” with less work, and without fancy AI. The Metaweb is not about artificial intelligence, it’s about providing richer semantic interoperability, and richer semantic metadata, in existing applications and information sources. What do you think?