Yesterday, I mentioned and briefly commented on Clay Shirky's The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview. Since then, a number of good critiques of Clay's piece have been posted. These include:

Deconstructing The Syllogistic Shirky, by Shelley Powers. Extensive critique.

Shirky misses, by Danny Ayers. Brief critique, but with extensive comments from Dan Brickley.

Shirky's Men of Straw, by Danny Ayers. Extensive critique, also includes extensive comments from Damian Steer.

Syllogism, by Sam Ruby. Brief critique, but with lots of comments and trackbacks to others.

Note: if you don't recognize the term "systemantics" from my title, it comes from a book by John Gall that used to be titled Systemantics: The Underground Text of Systems Lore—How Systems Really Work and How They Fail.

This book is currently available in a new expanded edition, under the title The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small—Being the Third Edition of Systemantics. I read this book a number of years ago, and I finally have ordered a copy for myself, to re-read. It is highly recommended!

Systemantics lists and illustrates a number of "laws", like:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

The inverse proposition also appears to be true:

A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

"Success" or "Function" in any system may be failure in the larger or smaller systems to which they system is connected.

Corollary:

In setting up a new system, tread softly. You may be disturbing another system that is actually working.

So, I mention all this by way of saying that I think there are some important points Clay is making, but I think there are many, many different "systems" in play in everything that might be described under banners like the "semantic web" or "metadata".

It is too vague to critique these things all together in one lump (just like it is too vague to suggest that these things all together in one lump will be a good thing).