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Tim Berners-Lee and the Semantic Web
An anonymous reader writes "As we all know, Tim Berners-Lee is the hero of the Web's creation story--he conjured up this system and chose not to capitalize on it commercially. It turns out that Sir Tim (he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in July) had a much grander plan in mind all along--a little something he calls the Semantic Web that would enable computers to extract meaning from far-flung information as easily as today's Internet links individual documents. In an interview with Technology Review, the Web-maestro explains his vision of 'a single Web of meaning, about everything and for everyone.'"
Well, beyond the "knowledge management"-type mumbo jumbo, anyway. Some basic definitions are here, here, and .
This always gets asked - and a partial answer is right here.
Eclipse plugins, visualization tools... there's some good stuff there.
The Army reading list
If you'd like an opposing view, make sure to read Clay Shirky's take on the semantic web.
A topic I posted a few years ago is perfectly relevant to this submission: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92504&cid=7953 441
The rest of us call this... GOOGLE.
Google identifies relationships between data using only on the links between pages containing the data.
The Semantic web represents relationships between data based on metadata (i.e. data about data). This is a far more powerful way to describe the meaning of data.
works for me.
Maybe, but that doesn't mean its the best way to accomplish what you are trying to do.
Here is an account that predicts that Google will leverage its search results to create a Semantic Web. I see this as a distinct possibility. Especially Google leveraging its search results to help people buy and sell stuff.
The rest of us call this... GOOGLE.
Google searches undifferentiated text. In contrast, the semantic web is all about differentiating text by adding meta tags.
For example, the word "Hilton" on a web page is ambiguous. It could be a hotel, or a celebrity. Which is it? With the semantic web we'd know:
Of course, this is a fairly trivial example. A more meaningful example:
And what happens when people start misusing the metadata like the current meta tags?
The Semantic Web just provides a method for expressing metadata. Maintaining the integrity of those expressions involves a different set of problems. Some of the solutions include trust metrics like Slashdot's own distributed moderation (PDF) or Advogato.