Dear all: Dreyfus discusses the limitations of Web searching specifically in _On the Internet_, ch. 1, esp. pp. 21ff. He cites some Information Retrieval folk who state that a ca. 30% retrieval rate (of all genuinely relevant/meaningful documents) is the current wall for retrieval techniques. I'm not sure if Dreyfus has looked at the proposals for the semantic web closely - but he's been very clear (for many decades now - smile!) that semantics in the strong sense of human meaning are beyond the reach of AI (which apparently plays some role in this project in terms of making intelligent - i.e., ostensibly meaningful - links between web pages). Some of his argument on this point is summarized in ch. 1 of _On the Internet_ It will at least be interesting to see what happens. For my part, I take the Nietzschean motto: Let us try it... Cheerfully, Charles Ess Director, Interdisciplinary Studies Center Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC 2002: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac02/ "...to be non-violent, we must not wish for anything on this earth which the meanest and lowest of human beings cannot have." -- Gandhi

From: Arthur Stutt <A.Stutt@open.ac.uk> Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 15:52:39 +0000 To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] The Semantic Web

Hi

Has anyone come across any material which takes a critical look at the social impact of the Semantic Web as envisaged by TIM BERNERS-LEE, et al.?

http://www.sciam.com/2001/0501issue/0501berners-lee.html http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ http://www.semanticweb.org/

Arthur

_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l