The Semantic Web and You

By Jaffrey Ali

May 23, 2005

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The Semantic Web is the brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee, one of the original designers of the World Wide Web. While the Web we have now is easy for humans to navigate, the idea of the Semantic Web is to make it friendlier for machines. Instead of relying solely on HTML, which tells a computer how to display information, the Semantic Web will provide a framework that tells a computer what it is displaying. The benefit is that machines as well as humans will be better able to make deductions and organize information—ultimately facilitating our own ability to make decisions.

Although the Semantic Web movement is still in its infancy, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is working to define the standards and technologies that will form the basis for the Semantic Web. The challenge for the W3C and other proponents is that there appears to be little consensus about what the early Semantic Web will look like. However, the movement is providing a springboard for many new technologies and techniques. As is often the case, the first applications of these new technologies are driven not by the standards bodies or the research institutions, but by enterprises that have market incentives to spend real money on real problems. As a result, even as the broader public version of the Semantic Web is taking shape, we are already seeing semantic concepts being applied within the walls of many enterprises.

Knowledge workers—people who think in their jobs—today play an increasingly important role in the enterprise, while the role of push-button operators and order takers is declining. Several factors account for these trends. First, most enterprises now have so many systems and databases that people need more than one application to do their jobs. In fact, fewer than 25 percent of business users can perform their jobs in one application. The problem is that business is increasingly dynamic and cross-functional, but the applications people use to conduct business are not.

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