This is in reply to the following discussion .
I put it here because there is no guarantee of it emerging in web3beat (so, I am not only being called names, I also risk being moderated now ;).

It is slightly edited, but still addressed to one person in particular. However, I hope it will save others some time, in particular those feeling lost in the Web3 VS SemWeb VS SemTech VS Linked Data naming problem. Especially business folks who are starting to run into this communicational mess.

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The reason it is worth spending time here is because this is not a simple topic and is probably more important than the tech aspects involved. The "definitional confusion" is in fact what has kept the SW from coming to life.

From a social POV a Web of Data would be a gift. Just one URI gives you access to all the data relative to a certain event, person or project. Companies would benefit too of course, and new industries will appear, but just think of those "below the waterlevel" cases where people live and die out of a paper or a fact receiving proper attention.
Integration projects are expensive. But, what if you get rid of integration costs?
What if you outsource analysis? (part of the ecosystem that is already starting to align).
( add other ideas here... )

It is quite fascinating to see how such amount of value has remained stuck by protocolar aspects. RDF has been around since (1997?), Ontologies even before that. Text analysis is not new either. Agents are also old in the sense that not much advance has been made lately. They all hit walls at some point and have been evolving in a continuous manner (as opposed to radical).

Moving these techs yet one meter more will not trigger a paradigm shift. So that's not the front where we need to focus now. Which one is it?
There has been something else missing here.

With a calm mind, please take a look at what the Linked Data community has built in a year and the rate of growth it is attaining.
The only reason this "explosion" is happening now is because a group of people were bright enough to realize that they needed to split the vision. I agree this is just data and technology today, but expect to see an ecosystem of products and services very soon.
Why am I so certain about the latter? because there is value here. It simply provides better, faster solutions to many problems that exist today.

( And the answer to the existence of a semweb app is: Hardly, since we're just witnessing the birth of the web. I expect some of them will start hooking *into* the SemWeb during 2009. Just like you may choose to connect to the web today )

( I explained the difference between semweb and semtech on my blog ).

Now, on why this debate reached such heights. I spent time here, and I guess others did as well, because what might be "just an assertion" to you is in fact potentially problematic.
This web property is called Web3beat. Dan organizes events. You (Greg) most certainly have access to business users, decision makers and probably even people from Forrester and such.

To align with you in simple terms.
Linked Data is a simplification of the overall vision and a "marketing" trick if you wish to make people focus on what has to be done *now* w/o the overhead of having them buy/understand the intricacies of the next steps. Ontology alignment, structured data publishing, text mining and, eventually, privacy debates will all be (inevitable) consequences of the first step.

And have no sense withuout it.

The pool needs to be filled with water. We can then deploy the nice tricks.

This assertion has technical proof, and I can understand that it is not so obvious from a non-tech savvy level.
Even within the community there is confusion, since most people from inside see the project as one whole block.
Remember that this has taken a long, long time.

Again. Take a look at the LOD cloud and fantasize about what services will grow obsolete (an indicator of disruptive tech) and try to attain how much value is building up in there. Why didn't this happen before?

That's the point. That's what we've been consistently arguing.
Linked Data is the Water in the Pool ;)

We need this seed to showcase the USPs of the Web of Data, drive demand and make the industry advance.

Regards,
A