Jon Udell's great write-up on his experiment in creating a viral web service using a library lookup service is great. It's fascinating to see how quickly the network effects of RSS/weblogs + open, URL-based APIs can combine to achieve massive adoption of a software service. Jon's advice to web service creators is right on --- keep it simple and compatible, and leverage the auto-magic aspects of weblog's and RSS aggregators to reach millions of users.
He also comments on the interesting ways in which weblogs inherently provide a form of trust and authentication on content --- popularity rankings, weblog indexing engines, and the authenticity and value of the authors voice and content convey measures of trust and value to online content.
The Semantic Web is about people, and specifically about making people's voices clearly audible and indelible:
Audible - There are six billion of us on the planet. Some people would have you believe that you should never ask any of us for advice, because we lie. But today I can't even hear your lies. The Internet has made it immensely easier to connect with expertise from other humans who want to share it, but we are still largely shackled by cultural, geographic, social, and technological constraints limiting who we can consult for advice. Today I get most of my lies from whichever barbarians have clawed their way to the top of the local and national media outlets. But sometimes when I see an advertisement for an interesting new product, I want to be able to pick up my remote control and click on "connect me to five people who hate the product and ask them why". I am sure that there are at least five people who want to give me a perspective different from the one being broadcast, so why can I not hear their voices?
Indelible - Few people think about the noble role that librarians play. Our ability to collect, organize, and preserve the voices and observations of those who came before us is critical to our continued survival as a species. The story of Babel is a metaphor for what later happened at Alexandria; a reminder that we all suffer when we lose our ability to pass lessons to future generations. It is possible for a single person to memorize the Quran and pass it on to others, but word-of-mouth is not enough to perpetuate the bulk of knowledge that enables the planet to support six billion people today. Without written language and our knowledge stewards, we would have to eliminate many billions of people, because we wouldn't be able to maintain the capabilities that support them all. Again, the Internet has had a profound impact on our ability to preserve our collective memory, but we are still very fragile. A true librarian has vivid memories of Babel and Alexandria (when we also considered ourselves invincible), and lives the motto "never again!". The first lesson of history (that we must learn and never repeat) is that history lost is humanity lost.
