[uf-discuss] Article about why microformats are cool

[Keith Grennan]

Hi,

I was inspired to write an article about why microformats are cool and
important.  Feel free to take a look.

http://nearlyfree.org/microformats-sip-sea-water

"...there are 14 billion websites, but like the scattered builders of the
tower of Babel, these sites are all speaking different languages. Well,
that's not entirely true - they all speak HTML, but HTML was not
meant to do much beyond describing how a page of information should be
displayed to a human (ideally 32 pixels large, without serifs, pink and
blinking), or declaring that some kind of link between two documents
exists ("Click here to see pictures of my pet mongoose"). So
yes, this system was designed to be able to publish all human knowledge,
but only in a very, very unorganized way, which makes higher-order
functions like categorization, aggregation, and notification very very
difficult. For instance, we need Google, the most powerful supercomputer
brain on the planet, constantly sorting through the muck, just to help
us find things, which it sometimes might do for you, if you're
lucky. But being able to find things, though important, is really only
part of what a useful knowledge system should be able to do. Information
is much more valuable when it is stored in such a way that higher-order
operations on it are possible, and better yet, are easy."

Cheers,
Keith