Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The Semantic Wot?
The Semantic Web. Heard of it? If you haven't, you're likely to hear more and more about it soon. I had a rough idea of what it was but then came across a related article this morning, followed this link to that and so on (you know what boys are like).
I learned a little about Yahoo's forthcoming semantic search engine, Search Monkey, played with a little stuff myself, then realised I really didn't have a good working definition in my mind of what the Semantic Web is. Found a pretty good one on Wikipedia, which I thought I'd share (even if only one other person has the slightest interest!):
Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Finnish word for "cat", reserving a library book, and searching for a low price on a DVD. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web. Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows:
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analysing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A 'Semantic Web', which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The 'intelligent agents' people have touted for ages will finally materialise.
– Tim Berners-Lee, 1999
If you want to go a little more nerdesque, read this about the social web and this article about how one feature of the sematic web is already working - XFN - or social relationship plotting.
I learned a little about Yahoo's forthcoming semantic search engine, Search Monkey, played with a little stuff myself, then realised I really didn't have a good working definition in my mind of what the Semantic Web is. Found a pretty good one on Wikipedia, which I thought I'd share (even if only one other person has the slightest interest!):
Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Finnish word for "cat", reserving a library book, and searching for a low price on a DVD. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web. Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows:
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analysing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A 'Semantic Web', which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The 'intelligent agents' people have touted for ages will finally materialise.
– Tim Berners-Lee, 1999
If you want to go a little more nerdesque, read this about the social web and this article about how one feature of the sematic web is already working - XFN - or social relationship plotting.
Tags for Forum Posts: semantic web, xfn
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