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You can't do anything worthwhile without pissing somebody off. – I forget
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Daily link icon Tuesday, December 26, 2006

On Semantics

People like this commenter on Simon's blog drive me nuts enough to make me want to post about it.

you clearly do not understand the idea of a 'semantic' web. Using xml makes it possible to use that information on other places, you can include it in an xml document, like xhtml, using xlink to point to certain data elements. And another advantages: Your data is tagged. You have given it semantic meaning. [emphasis mine]

Please. As if <foo>bar</foo> has any more "semantic meaning" [1] than "foo": "bar". Symbols have meaning when some agent imparts meaning to them. I.e. something has meaning when some person or thing understands it to have a certain meaning. Just because something is "tagged" doesn't give that something any meaning. The tags have to be interpreted by some intelligence, that intelligence being either a person, or by proxy, code that a person has written to "understand" those tags by performing some action based on them. "foo":... can be interpreted just the same as <foo>...</foo> can. Get off your high horse.

(Incindentally, the epistemelogical need for unity of meaning, to me, is a very strong argument for God as the foundation of meaning. But that's a separate discussion.)

Footnotes:
[1]: this phrase irks the hell out of me as well. It's redundant. Only people who want to use more words to make themselves sound intelligent talk about "semantic meaning"

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Comments XML gif

Anne van Kesteren (http://annevankesteren.nl/) wrote:

That's why mostly people should just use HTML.

∴ Anne van Kesteren | 26-Dec-2006 4:16pm est | http://annevankesteren.nl/ | #9884

Hannibal wrote:

There is nothing that is that semantic about the semantic web. Semantics is the expression of meaning through symbols. The semantic web is nothing more than a committee trying to decide how to best exchange data and disambiguate words for software.

Semantics should be discussed in reference to poetry and music. It belongs to the sublime world of the arts, not to the mundane world of specifications and ontologies.

Fuck the semantic web.

∴ Hannibal | 27-Dec-2006 10:06pm est | #9889

Hannibal wrote:

(Incindentally, the epistemelogical need for unity of meaning, >to me, is a very strong argument for God as the foundation of >meaning. But that's a separate discussion.)

That's just the way your brain evolved.

∴ Hannibal | 27-Dec-2006 10:18pm est | #9890

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