A report from WWW10.

With the Semantic Web, Tim Berners-Lee is attempting to reproduce the technique that worked so well with the Web -- a simple concept magnified by billion of distributed sites. However, more effort will be needed to convince the skeptics.

Some WWW10 delegates, including W3C members from leading vendors, explained that they consider the Semantic Web a distraction for the W3C, and think that resources and focus should be employed to progress simple specifications enabling web services and e-commerce applications.

These protesters find allies amongst knowledge management specialists, who believe that the problem of knowledge representation addressed by the Semantic Web is too complex to be solved by simple solutions.

During his keynote, Tim Berners-Lee reminded the skeptics that the Web was built on a very simple adaptation of complex hyperlinking technologies, and its power comes from the number of participating sites. To convince them that the same process can be used to build the Semantic Web, he announced that he was resuming hacking, and presented some preliminary results during a W3C track.