You cannot possibly know how much this delights me!
Most of my writing was about social media, back when the web was young, but "Ontology is Overrated" is actually my favorite thing I ever wrote, and it makes me happy beyond measure to know that it helped someone manage an actual argument over whether to buy into the semantic web!
I have never been talented enough to write production code, but I often thought of myself as trying to provide ammunition to people like you who are, when talking to bosses who didn't understand that the phrase "Now it's just a simple matter of programming!" was a bitter, sardonic joke, not an upbeat assessment of possibility.
Thank you for telling this story! This whole thread has been like hearing my own eulogy, but this in particular is just :chefs_kiss:
Awesome! Yeah man, you nailed it all on the head back then, and yes, saved my ass. Sorry the thread felt like a eulogy. You've got a lot of mileage left in you my friend, and I'm looking forward to your future insights on the next big trends none of us are predicting yet.
The response of the academics to your writings was actually a master class for me in the nature of academic corruption and groupthink. What I learned from that experience was that (contrary to my prior beliefs) high IQ individuals are actually far more susceptible to cognitive dissonance than others are, not less so. They are far more adept at mentally constructing rationalizations and false realities that bolster and protect their existing belief systems from new information than most people are. Add to that the fact that they are extremely economically vulnerable to reputational damage, and you have a really toxic recipe.
Most of my writing was about social media, back when the web was young, but "Ontology is Overrated" is actually my favorite thing I ever wrote, and it makes me happy beyond measure to know that it helped someone manage an actual argument over whether to buy into the semantic web!
I have never been talented enough to write production code, but I often thought of myself as trying to provide ammunition to people like you who are, when talking to bosses who didn't understand that the phrase "Now it's just a simple matter of programming!" was a bitter, sardonic joke, not an upbeat assessment of possibility.
Thank you for telling this story! This whole thread has been like hearing my own eulogy, but this in particular is just :chefs_kiss: