Semantic Distance for Concepts and the Semantic Web

This is the reason why Semantic Web standards are are difficult to use in practice:

"variable semantic distances between concepts* of a same class, and dynamic variations of these distances due to contextual representation"

Pellegrin, L, Bastien, C, Roux, M., 1994. Representation of medical concepts of the thyroid gland by physicians in anatomy and pathology. Methods in Medicine 33, 382 -389.

Our upcoming paper on the topic will be complete soon. We hope the revision finds acceptance in Computers and Electronics in Agriculture published by Reed Elsevier.

Overall, the Semantic Web is an important area. Even though it is not yet as widespread as Facebook or Twitter, the research efforts do highlight the difficulty in connecting concepts and from a broader perspective the potential of modeling knowledge. We believe our approach using the M Language is simpler and less ambitious, and perhaps will gain wider acceptance in practice.

*A concept is a cognitive unit of meaning, see Wiki def. for concept

I like to use "unit of meaning" rather than "concept." This could be a word, a phrase, or a sentence.