XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web

Opening Salvo

We are smart enough to realize we are stupid, and stupid enough to make the problem of becoming smarter hard.

—Anders Sandberg^[1]

^[1] From “Amplifying Cognition: Extending Memory and Intelligence,” 1997. Accessed online at http://www.extropy.org/ideas/journal/previous/1997/11-01.html.

I know; that's a heady, arrogant way to open a book. But this book is about heady stuff, and I'll try to prove it. To do so, I shall cast the information this book presents in a light far brighter than topic maps, computers, indeed, the Universe and Everything.^[2] That's my intent, anyway.

^[2] With apologies to the late Douglas Adams. See his site at http://www.douglasadams.com/.

David Weinberger had this to say about the Web:

The world that we've ...