I know things are not so obvious on this front, so I can spare most people from not getting it. But when someone calls himself an expert consultant and starts discrediting Linked Data, all I can say is: geez... is it that bad?

It is all going to become pretty obvious rather soon. But for now, let me give you some hints.

Understanding what's really going on with this Web3.0 thing is not about being smarter or belonging to a given elite. The truth about the architectural future of the web is simple, but the story has been stretched through time and we don't see the direction of the plot, just like we don't perceive the sun's movement across the sky.

But the sun is moving.

( yeah, I know... but let's just say it is ;)

In the case of the Web's architecture, the trajectory follows a long term roadmap and, at this point, we are about to take one major step forward: moving from a Document Web to a Data Web.

The specifics of how this happens are actually quite simple. Just Google for "Linked Data".

( TIP: That's why RDF uses URIs everywhere. It is not to make our lifes harder... but so "data" can be accessed and linked to the Web. Pretty much like we access Web Pages today )

So, is it just data? No black magic? Records/Entities with URIs as Identifiers?
But, what's with this "Semantic" Thingy?
I thought this was much more complex: Ontologies, NLP, Rules, etc...

Ahh. Good question!

The short version of the answer is:

That's what happens when you put a lot of smart people together and things take longer than expected. They need to put their large brains to work on something. Luckily, they worked on the same project and took the second, third and probably fourth steps.
They could do this because, even if the first step ( Data Web ) was not ready, they could still use "mini Data Webs" ( any application is a mini Data Web. or Data Intranet if you wish ).
The fact that we have gained experience on the next steps is good because now that we are actually taking the first ones we have a much better idea on how to proceed and there are tons of tools anxiously waiting to get their teeth into a bigger pray.

But, if this is just happening, then why are there "Semantic Web" companies out there?
Oh, well. I can't be authoritative here as this is not my trademark and they sure have good intentions. But this is more or less what happened:

The second, third and fourth steps are generally about applying old (but powerful) ideas to large sets of data: reasoning, integration, extraction and analysis, etc. These techs are not conceptually new but, given their tight relation with the Semantic Web project, they have come to be known in some circles as Semantic Web technologies. In fact, most of them have been influenced by SW standards and the overall vision ( we are talking about a whole decade here! ).

But this is just "Semantic Tech", as there is not Web component yet (except for a few companies that are appearing as of 2008/2009).

So, I say it once again: Semantic Tech is just a part of the Semantic Web. Steps two, three, etc. The other part is, of course, the "Web" over which the techs will be applied.

Companies that use these"Semantic Techs" might or might not be aligned with the first step.

In fact, there are many companies that also use "Semantic Techs" but don't even know about this new collective name. Remember that these techs are not new. In fact, you can trace many of them back to ancient times!

And by ancient I mean ancient in internet time ( 20/30 years ) and in human time as well ( Greeks et Al. ).

Now, this might seem easy to understand yet there is a lot of controversy surrounding the definitions. Just think about the WWW for a while ( the Document Web as we know it ).
If you have a bunch of HTML files stored in your PC and they have no links going outwards and are not published on the Web ( not accessible via a URL, with or w/o security )... are these files ON the web?

Or if you put them on a Zip file and carry them around in a USB stick?

They would be just documents. Disconnected documents. The fact that they are using HTML is just an anecdote, as they are not really taking benefit of the core value proposition behind HTML: Links.

Stay tuned ;)