A Dispute Over the Value of Semantically Enhanced HTML

• In Event: Schemas, Graphs, Ontologies - II

Abstract

While knowledge organization systems (KOS)—taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, gazetteers, catalogs, name authorities, and so on—are as old as writing itself, interest in them wanes and waxes. That interest is currently at a high point, as tech companies, having rebranded KOS as “knowledge graphs,” compete to formalize the knowledge needed to answer simple questions and automate routine transactions. But among the tech elite of a decade ago these technologies were decidedly out of fashion, derided as obsolete and inapplicable to “the digital world.” In order to understand how the formalization of knowledge can be valued so differently under different regimes of justification and evaluation, I examine a dispute over a proposed extension to the HTML standard. This extension, known as RDFa, would make it possible to use HTML as a generic carrier for “semantic” data linked to KOS. To its proponents, this was obviously desirable—yet the proposal met bitter opposition. The dispute occurred during 2008–2009, at a conjuncture that would significantly shape the subsequent development of the Web and the rise of the platforms that consumed it. The World Wide Web consortium (W3C) had recently lost control of the HTML standard to a coalition of companies developing Web browsers, who felt that the W3C was hampering the transformation of the Web into a “platform” for distributing software applications. Thus the dispute, while narrowly focused on the justification for semantically enriched HTML, also sheds light on broader conflicts over the value of the Web itself.

Author

• Ryan Shaw, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill