I've never worked in any field that might be considered "semantic web", but at my last gig I spent some time researching deductive database technology.
"Semantic web" was like a keyword that popped up in the abstract of virtually every paper published on the topic since the mid 90s or so. It seemed to me one of those phrases that virtually guaranteed grants of funding if you could work it into your paper.
I think you're correct that people working in the field of semantic web oftentimes didn't understand (or lost sight of) the intended nature and utility of the concept. But I also think that its buzzword status lead to the label being applied to many things that were only loosely related.
There was (is?) a lot of good work happening under the heading of "semantic web", but—partly because the term was not an apt one for the work, and partly because the dream of the semantic web never really actualized—that work has remained relatively obscure. Obversely, there was much work of questionable worth happening under the same banner, likely because it was a reliable way to get funding, at which point we return to that extremely important-sounding literature that's nothing but a giant ball of crap...
"Semantic web" was like a keyword that popped up in the abstract of virtually every paper published on the topic since the mid 90s or so. It seemed to me one of those phrases that virtually guaranteed grants of funding if you could work it into your paper.
I think you're correct that people working in the field of semantic web oftentimes didn't understand (or lost sight of) the intended nature and utility of the concept. But I also think that its buzzword status lead to the label being applied to many things that were only loosely related.
There was (is?) a lot of good work happening under the heading of "semantic web", but—partly because the term was not an apt one for the work, and partly because the dream of the semantic web never really actualized—that work has remained relatively obscure. Obversely, there was much work of questionable worth happening under the same banner, likely because it was a reliable way to get funding, at which point we return to that extremely important-sounding literature that's nothing but a giant ball of crap...