Building the Do What I Mean Engine
I have a friend who emigrated to Canada from France. One night, we arranged to have dinner together and he offered to bring dessert : teurgoule, a slow-cooking rice pudding from Normandy. Half an hour before he was due to arrive, he phoned in a panic. The dessert had been in the oven, cooking at 150 degrees just like the recipe said, for hours but it wasn't anywhere near being done. Eventually, someone thought to ask him if he hadn't set the oven to 150 degrees Farenheit.
What do you mean Farenheit?he exclaimed.I thought Canada used the Metric system!Which is true, officially, except when it's not. In reality, Canadians measure gasoline and milk in litres and flour in cups; lengths of timber in feet and snowfall in centimeters; cooking times in degrees Farenheit and the weather in degrees Celsius; most weights using an aribitrary mix of grams and pounds.
I like to tell this story because it demonstrates both the potential and the pitfalls of the Semantic Web.
Hey look, the article I wrote about trying to make the Eatdrinkfeelgood markup language RDF-friendly has been published. It is based on a presentation I gave, last fall in Montréal, during the first meeting of the Canadian Semantic Web Interest Group.
As an addendum, I include here the sidebar that the editor's chose to cut. Partly for the sake of thoroughness but mostly because it's a good story.