To keep readers grounded, each chapter is preceded by what the authors call an "interlude," a conversational device to walk us through thinking about what a semantic web means and how it would play out in critical thinking applications.
To date, the web has largely grown to handle communication and commerce but further growth is stunted in significant ways. The most explosive developments we've seen in recent years are the portals to nonsense and social networking sites. What is the next probable step? The Semantic Web.
The book states we need to achieve at least two key advances in order to achieve the full potential of the web as it relates to human productivity:
1. Ubiquitous access to transaction applications of all types, and
2. Intelligent software applications enabling automated transactions.
The "Semantic Web," a new architecture, can provide users the ability to work on shared knowledge, using meaningful representations. The Semantic Web could utilize metadata, ontologies, and logic to carry out tasks, collecting and organizing information while communicating with other web resources as needed.
An ontology (which defines the relations among terms) that expresses rules for manipulating information can lead to the full power of the Semantic Web when programs "can collect web content from diverse sources, automatically access the info and communicate the results in an appropriate form," according to Alesso and Smith.
Tim Berners-Lee is familiar to our generation for his contributions to today's technology, which include:
- WWW – World Wide Web, the graphical browser
- HTML – Hypertext Markup Language, "unleashing of commercialization on the internet"
- URL – Uniform Resource Locator, which combines www and html, and
- HTTP – Hypertext Transmission Protocol, although development of hypertext was first credited to Vannevar Bush, another computer pioneer.
Other highlights:
Chapter 10 covers forward thinking application for Semantic Web, such as better search,
e-learning, life sciences and drug discoveries, where Semantic Web applications could unlock the many databases and information systems in global use.
Chapter 12 covers the broad concept of search. This chapter provides great training for people who don't understand or appreciate the complexity of search, and should be required reading for anyone working in technology today.
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