Duck!

I just posted the following onto a mailing list for information research professionals.

It was written in reaction to someone rubbishing the semantic web and folksonomies.

I hope they don't take it too personally!

The web works because it is broken and not owned.

Yes there is rubbish on the web but the availability of relevant, accurate information at your fingertips has exploded in ways that even ten years ago most people couldn't have imagined and which have never ever been delivered by "conventional" means.

There were nay-sayers then, and indeed there still are, but I would be cautious about assuming that the collective, applied intelligence of millions of people is more fallible than a small group of experts with the power to confer meaning.