I’m not going to pretend to understand the issues that Dave Winer is talking about in this essay on RDF, but something he said really hit home for me:
It’s a cute, and all-too-common tactic to say that people who don’t get it are dumb. I’m not dumb, but RDF makes me feel that way. After all these years, I’ve concluded that if I can’t understand it, it doesn’t have much of a chance in the market. All the powerfully successful technologies of the past have had simple explanations anyone could understand.
If you look back at what really works on the Net, despite the Law of Leaky Abstractions, simplicity always seems to be the big winner. This may be at the expense of technical excellence, but it’s also very liberating and democratic.
I don’t think I’ve ever regretted choosing simplicity over technology in my personal or professional life.