I delivered a keynote speech at the recent London mashup* (ReadWrite/Web’s take on the event) at BT’s superb conference centre. I was hit by a number of good challenging questions during the panel session afterwards. This in itself is great because it means I stimulated some interest. Although, Philip Wilkinson told me that he fell asleep! He put it down to jetlag after a trip to the Valley. I put it down to BT’s first class beds, like the ones you get in BA first class. Phil, did you get a cocktail at the back?

Anyway, the passion for the Semantic Web was apparent, even if it wasn’t a positive vibe from a few hecklers Some members of the audience complained about the length of time it’s taking to demonstrate real value and asked why it’s taking so long for the Semantic Web to come of age.

So, I thought I’d draw your attention to a brilliant post written by Ian Davis from BT Talis. Ian brought this to the attention of the W3C Semantic Web Education and Outreach specialist interest group (of which I’m a proud member). The post demonstrates that the Semantic Web initiative isn’t actually taking as long as some people think.

Below is an excerpt from Ian’s post.

I haven’t included the context for Ian’s post. He wrote this in response to what he read on Elliotte Rusty Harold’s predictions for the XML world in 2007.

Technology, especially standards track work, takes years to cross the chasm from early adopters (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) to the early majority (the pragmatists). And when I say years, I mean years. Take CSS for example. I’d characterise CSS as having crossed the chasm and it’s being used by the early majority and making inroads into the late majority. I don’t think anyone would seriously argue that CSS is not here to stay.

According to this semi-official history of CSS the first proposal was in 1994, about 13 years ago. The first version that was recognisably the CSS we use today was CSS1, issued by the W3C in December 1996. This was followed by CSS2 in 1998, the year that also saw the founding of the Web Standards Project. CSS 2.1 is still under development, along with portions of CSS3.

Let’s compare that with the key Semantic Web specifications: RDF and OWL. RDF emerged from earlier work by Guha called MCF and, with a heavy dose of XML courtesy of Tim Bray, it was issued as a recommendation by the W3C in February 1999. It was followed almost exactly 5 years later by a set of cleaner specifications that tidied up some loose ends and removed some cruft from the earlier specification. The OWL recommendations were issued at about the same time.

So why did CSS take so long to gain traction? 13 years from inception, 10/11 years from first accepted specification? To be honest it didn’t really solve a new problem. For most people it just solved a problem with an existing solution in a new way. HTML already allowed people to style their pages, to align elements and to layout their documents. It did it rather well for most people and for those who thought in terms of a few HTML pages CSS just seemed like a new way to do the same old thing. However, for those who needed to apply consistent formatting across a very large number of pages; or for those who wanted to be able to offer different styles for different users or media; or for those who wanted to share their designs then CSS was the clear winner.

[..big snip]

I’m hoping that the time frame for the Semantic Web crossing the chasm is somewhere between the two estimates; between 3 and 9 years. I’m hoping that it’s going to be at the lower end of that scale, say 5 years, but that still means we have a long multi-year struggle to evangelise and persuade. It’s going to be worth it!

I think we’ll see more user benefits being implemented in 2007 with the introduction of Content Labels (naturally). I certainly hope we deliver in less than 9 years