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.'"

Comments

What is the semantic web?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, beyond the "knowledge management"-type mumbo jumbo, anyway. Some basic definitions are here, here, and .

"Where's some semantic web software?"

[tcopeland]

This always gets asked - and a partial answer is right here.

Eclipse plugins, visualization tools... there's some good stuff there.

Opposing view

[Psychic Burrito]

If you'd like an opposing view, make sure to read Clay Shirky's take on the semantic web.

Google can leverage its search

[PineHall]

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.

Actually, Google is a search engine

[wombatmobile]

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:

<motel>
Hilton
</motel>

<celebrity>
Hilton
</celebrity>

Of course, this is a fairly trivial example. A more meaningful example:

<partnumber>
LHMJ67523119900012
</partnumber>