Clay Shirky's essay, "The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview:" [0] is a powerful warning about the pitfalls of global efforts to categorize information.
In the early 2000s I had a manager who evangelized "the semantic web" to our team as being just years from taking over the world. He was convinced that we needed to integrate RDF into every product to remain relevant. Shirky's essay persuasively articulated why this would have been a waste of effort for us.
Years on, these ideas still influence my analysis of elevator pitches, business plans and requested features.
In the early 2000s I had a manager who evangelized "the semantic web" to our team as being just years from taking over the world. He was convinced that we needed to integrate RDF into every product to remain relevant. Shirky's essay persuasively articulated why this would have been a waste of effort for us.
Years on, these ideas still influence my analysis of elevator pitches, business plans and requested features.
edit:
Thank you, Clay!
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150323162650/http://www.shirky...