Remembering the Future

To jump straight to the punch line, 1. In order for a user to enter information, you need a GUI, although a small pidgin may sometimes be enough. 2. In order to merge information syntactically, you need XML, although a small subset of XML is often enough. 3. In order to merge information semantically, you need a Topic Map, although RDF is often enough. The real work is in building the GUI, and the transform that converts it to a topic map. Not to mention, performing the work for which all this machinery was originally intended.