The man who invented the wheel - twice!

Published : 10 July 2010

When the former Labour minister Jack Straw walked over to Sir Tim Berners Lee during the latter’s introduction to an awestruck UK Cabinet in June 2009 and said how honoured he was to meet the man who had invented the World Wide Web, he said: “It’s like meeting the man who invented the wheel”. Straw’s colleague’s cruel follow up: “And what was that like Jack?”  seems destined already  to become part of web folklore. 

 
Berners Lee’s advocacy of the semantic web may indeed come to have significance equal to his first invention, of which it is the logical extension. His fame has enabled him to convince the governments of both the US and UK of the benefits of the semantic web, and his status and following among the global development community ensures that this is a bandwagon that no politician wishes to jump off.

But it’s the support and buy in of the true governing bodies of the worldwide web who will ensure that this is no flash in the pan technology craze. Facebook, Wikipedia and Google have all committed themselves to creating deeper and more intelligent links to their data.

Facebook announced in April 2010 the adoption of the simpler RDFa protocol into its Open Graph Protocol. Within a month Google had made a similar announcement and Wikipedia‘s working group on RDFa has been on the case for several months with a commitment in June to making the semantic web the heart of their approach to data.

Perhaps of even more significance is the fact that Tesco, the UK supermarket leader, and Best Buy have adopted RDFa in  their product catalogue data APIs. 

All of these organisations more than Governments will be the true engineers of change. Signs of the times – and recognition of how fast this wheel is turning.

Stable URIs lie at the heart of this revolution – just as DOIs lay beneath the great scientific information revolution of the past ten years. The vision of people like Bob Kahn, the inventor of the internet protocols TCP and IP and of the Handle system ought to be recognised. Several years ago we supported Bob in his efforts to convince Government of the virtues of stable linking to deep data (albeit via Handles and DOIs). He was too early in the cycle. 

History though is written by the winners and it will again allocate to his great rival Sir Tim Berners Lee the recognition for inventing the wheel –  and not once, but twice!