Comments on: Has the Geek been Disinherited?

By: Jenny Rawley

Jenny Rawley — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:27:34 +0000

wonderful post, very informative. I wonder why the other experts of this sector do not notice this. You must continue your writing. I am sure, you’ve a great readers’ base already!

By: nickpoole

nickpoole — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:57:25 +0000

It’s always seemed to me that the killer app for museums and libraries is auto-completion of documentation - or at least partial auto-completion or ‘assisted cataloguing’.

Like preditive text, you start entering data and it uses linked data to draw an informed extrapolation of your intended meeting. Then, when you correct it, it gets a little bit smarter and adds to the total fund of knowledge.

Better, your resource base for connecting knowledge to objects suddenly goes from the 50-100 people you can afford to employ to the 100m people publishing data on the web.

I think we can do more than be part of linked data - I think we should be using it to enrich it with the historical record - like Google with a memory.

By: Mia

Mia — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:04:52 +0000

Totally. Linked Data is (almost, for geeks) selling the sizzle, not the sausage - and that’s what this needs.

Of course, as Mike L says, it’s going to happen behind the scenes anyway. With any luck, the cultural heritage sector/MLAs will be part of that.

By: nickpoole

nickpoole — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:01:12 +0000

So maybe we need just to cut ourselves some slack - the last generation of projects delivered good stuff and created knowledge which we couldn’t have anticipated beforehand. Sure, some of the outputs were completely lame, but collectively, progress was made and good things happened.

Perhaps the impetus to mass-digitise wasn’t to create a critical mass of access, but a critical mass of supply, in the hope that this would trigger new forms of demand.

I never *got* the Semantic Web, I freely admit, but Linked Data, that I get. Maybe it’s the same thing - maybe this is about marketing?

By: mikeL

mikeL — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:34:55 +0000

Semantic Web is anything but quiet. Its just not going to get a big public facing killer app anytime soon. Stuff like searchmonkey, google social graph api (XFN / FOAF), twine etc show that its happily moving along and becoming part of the scenery and the plumbing.

It may not hold ‘terror’ for the non-geeks, but they still often completely misunderstand it, so the geek can show them how to be ‘agile’ and collaborate - win win!

By: Mia

Mia — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:28:52 +0000

Btw, the semantic web has apparently become ‘web3.0′ (if you’re a ’social media expert’; it’s quietly appearing as ‘linked data’ in other ways). Iit’d be interesting to plot it onto Gartner’s Hype Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle).

By: Mia

Mia — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:26:15 +0000

Perhaps the problem didn’t lie so much with the geeks (though some definitely took advantage of others faith in their ability to guide them through this complicated new world) but with the people who understood it just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to really understand the new possibilities?

But I’m possibly just a geek who’s watched at least one too many dot-com boom bust cycles spin up around her…

By: James Grimster

James Grimster — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:11:02 +0000

Everyone can be a programmer geek with Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/
Even 4 year olds.
And they will inherit the Earth. Hopefully.