You couldn't be more right, and I think the key here is:
How each fact connects with other facts
If there were no operations, math would just be numbers on their own -- and what fun is that?
The problem is that the relations turn it into the Semantic Web, and after trying and failing to crack that nut for so long, everyone is turned off of it. Which is too bad, because what was failing was the approach. Trying several shipping routes to the New World and failing each time doesn't mean that the New World doesn't exist.
"The problem is that the relations turn it into the Semantic Web"
Not really. Assuming there are only four or five simple relationships like "Knowing fact X is necessary to understand fact Y", then the whole system isn't much more complicated than trackbacks for blog posts.
If it was that simple, it would already have been solved. The problem is that relations are for any data point and they can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many; and mixes metadata with data seamlessly. It's a hard problem, make no mistake, but completely solvable. I have an approach I'm working on that I'll email you, if you're interested.
If there were no operations, math would just be numbers on their own -- and what fun is that?
The problem is that the relations turn it into the Semantic Web, and after trying and failing to crack that nut for so long, everyone is turned off of it. Which is too bad, because what was failing was the approach. Trying several shipping routes to the New World and failing each time doesn't mean that the New World doesn't exist.