Infovark

April Fools Day has come and gone, and the Internet has largely returned to normal.

Yeah, the gags are pretty annoying. But they’re also kind of fun, right?

Yesterday’s antics led Dean to point out that April Fools Day would freak out the semantic web and emerging services based on it, like Calais and Twine.

As an example, out of no other reason than pure mischief, I mailed some of my friends a link to a video which I claimed was a leaked internal video analysis of HP’s recent acquisition of our former employer, TOWER Software. In my email, I harped on at length about some completely made up rubbish about strategy and future direction. Of course, the accompanying link was, in fact, to this video.

I know, I’m terribly original and downright hilarious, but back to the point:

Without the April Fool’s Day context, a careful semantic analysis of my emailed rickroll might permanently associate HP, TOWER Software, Strategy and Bad 80’s pop music. Or it might indicate that I was related to HP in some way (which I’m not). Regardless of how effective or capable any semantic engine is, any meaning that could possibly be extracted from my joke would be largely false, with the possible exception of the close — but now perhaps a bit strained — relationships between me and my friends.

No amount of metadata, microformats or markup can save the computers from human exaggeration, humor, or outright lies. And we humans have institutionalized a day where that’s all we do.