Technology Review: Sir Tim Berners-Lee
The key thing is that this data exists, but the computers don?t know what it is and how it interrelates. You can?t write programs to use it.
But when there?s a web of interesting global semantic data, then you?ll be able to combine the data you know about with other data that you don?t know about. Our lives will be enriched by this data, which we didn?t have access to before, and we?ll be able to write programs that will actually help because they?they will be able to understand the data out there rather than just presenting it to us on the screen.
I had a different understanding of the semantic web before this article. It seemed to me that the semantic web was a two way medium unlike the web, which is a one way medium. You download web pages to view them. What I gather from this article is that the semantic web is an intelligent version of the web, sprinkled with metadata, allowing web agents to find data that they require. In such a web, a very different google would be required, if at all. Metadata is probably the wrong word. XML together with XSLT etc. is what is going to shape the semantic web. This is what I have seen the W3C working on in the past few years. Its up to the developers out thier to take these technologies and put together applications that would benefit businesses and the normal people. Until some developer comes along and makes an amazing application for the masses, the semantic web will remain only in the eyes of its creator.
