ReadWriteWeb is the exclusive Media Partner for an interactive debate on the future of the Web, which kicks off in a couple of hours time. The debate features Tim Berners-Lee and will be webcast live. You can watch the debate and submit questions - including while it is happening - by clicking here. Semantic Web and Net Neutrality remain the most popular topics, so it should be fun. The event is being webcast live here (note: Silverlight required).
From the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute website:
On June 11, 2008, leading authorities on the World Wide Web will gather at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for an old-fashioned debate with a social media twist. The questions for discussion will be shaped and selected by the collective wisdom of Web users from around the world.
After delivering a keynote address, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, will join a panel of experts from academia and industry for a public discussion about the Web's future.
The content of the debate will be collaboratively created by Web users, who can submit questions and promote them through a user-based ranking system, similar to the community-based news site Digg. The most popular questions will drive the discussion at the June 11 debate.
The public debate, which will be streamed live via an interactive Webcast, is part of a daylong event to celebrate the launch of the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer -- a new academic center devoted to the emerging field of Web Science.
This event is a chance to discuss and argue about where the Web is headed. Berners-Lee's keynote is at 2:45 p.m. EST and the debate starts at 3:45 p.m. EST. Click here to check it out!
Comments
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i cant see nothing here
http://tw.rpi.edu/twc/
Posted by: shimon | June 11, 2008 11:38 AM
First I had to install Silverlight (grrr), then about 5 minutes in it the video stopped and a refresh gives me "presentation unavailable". :( they should have stuck to Flash...bummer.
Posted by: Peldi | June 11, 2008 12:06 PM
works again now
Posted by: Peldi | June 11, 2008 12:11 PM
I'm in the room, and will be posting throughout the event. You can follow my coverage of the presentation here:
http://twitter.com/kliza23
Posted by: Jesse Kliza | June 11, 2008 12:29 PM
I tried watching it on leopard with FF3rc2 and half the video is black.
Should of used webex.
Posted by: dMix | June 11, 2008 12:38 PM
Yes I'm having same issue as #5 with video (I'm on Mac too). Otherwise audio and slides coming through fine.
Posted by: Richard MacManus
|
June 11, 2008 12:51 PM
I switched to Safari (on Mac) and video works fine there.
Posted by: Richard MacManus
|
June 11, 2008 12:53 PM
The archived file:
http://mediasite.itops.rpi.edu/Mediasite4/Viewer/Viewers/Viewer320TL508.aspx?mode=Default&peid=f63d1d69-6159-4cca-add3-eb2b2749eca6&pid=97228a9a-4bc4-4086-bdfe-7963bc457ac4&playerType=WM64Lite
or
http://tinyurl.com/5epbef
Richard, I want to challenge you, however. You said, "Semantic Web and Net Neutrality remain the most popular topics, ..." Are you sure you meant to say THE most popular topics, or that they remain popular topics?
One of my biggest disappointments with the recent SemTech conference was that there was virtually no media in attendance. Let's face it, 50+% of the A-list tech bloggers live within driving distance of the conference site (in the South Bay), as do many Gartner and even some Forrester analysts. Did any show? No. Even with 1,000 people in the audience -- standing room only -- during the keynote panel that I moderated, "Rising Stars of the Semantic Web," still, no media stayed for the press conference that followed. OK, there were two or three media outlets, but SemanticReport.com and Jim Hender (Editor-in Chief of IEEE Intelligent Systems & Applications magazine and one of semweb's co-inventors) hardly represent MSM, or even tech pubs or blogs.
I'll be writing a column on this for the AlwaysOn Network, Sand Hill Group (for enterprise software) and SemanticReport.com staking a claim that semweb is evolutionary, not truly revolutionary as was the World Wide Web. Alas, it's just a tool. That's not necessarily a bad thing: Java is just a tool, too, and I'm sure the SemTech conference organizers would love to see SemTech even one-fifth the size of JavaOne. But to repeat, it's just a tool. It's like upgrading a site with AJAX. Great. Not a bad thing at all. I'm still a semweb evangelist ... as my URL denotes. Yet, semweb isn't the next great thing: It's more of an evolutionary process that will add tremendous value, especially in discovery (if someone can figure out how to get this right). Revolutionary? No. Semweb is a just a piece of the puzzle, a puzzle that includes all sorts of areas like intelligent agents. (I cover this in the fourth most popular twine, the "Apps: On Semantic Web & Related Applications" twine.)
Frankly, I hoped for a lot more from semweb. Perhaps a "managing my expectations" problem, but I've lowered the bar ... way, way down. (My day job is in the concentrating solar power sector and I live in China, so I really needed to rub elbows in order to get a read on commercial semweb prospects. This was my first front line take on all things semweb per se.)
The good news, however, is that a semweb layer will be added to a lot of existing platforms and there will be semweb plays on the usual fare: Social bookmarking sites, online threaded discussion groups, wikis, RSS readers, blogging platforms. Twine will soon cover all of these bases, but so might Yahoo! And in each category (e.g., wikis), I expect the leaders (like SocialText) to add a semweb layer, thereby allowing existing users to stick with their platform of choice and still take advantage of semweb. Think OpenCalais.
My panel had five semweb pure plays: Radar Networks (Twine), Powerset, Talis, StealthCompany.com, and AdaptiveBlue. I suspect that with the exception of Talis, none of them will exist in five years. Some will get bought (and this might be a good thing for their shareholders), but I don't see any as separate entities (maybe AdaptiveBlue since it's a Firefox add on ... but what does this say about its reach and viability as a company). Tom Gruber is where I'd place my bets, but within five years, StealthCompany.com will likely be acquired. Keep those StealthCompany.com t-shirts, though: They may have some historical value.
Regarding Radar Networks, I'm too close to it to be purely objective. IF they can pull everything that they need to pull together, they'll have a helluva service. However, $13 million to last for two years isn't a lot of money, figuring a headcount of 60 or so. And with less than two dozen developers currently on staff, this just seems a bit thin. I know that Nova doesn't want to give up too much equity, but he's trying to hit a grand slam in the bottom of the 9th: I see Radar as a go-for-broke play ... and with their limited resources, they're not going for broke. But, IF, just IF, Radar can tie everything together, Twine might be the biggest and hottest new property to come along this decade. $13 million for two years? Not enough, though. Not for what they're trying to do. And not to challenge what Dave Beckett & Co. might do with Yahoo properties, either. And let's not forget Google, of course -- or Microsoft, for that matter. (Oracle: I expect to see Oracle products with a semweb layer, but not challenging the consumer-focused pure plays like Radar Networks. They live in different neighborhoods ... maybe different galaxies!)
Posted by: David Scott Lewis | June 12, 2008 4:12 AM