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The Semantic Web Revisited

The Semantic Web Revisited
The Semantic Web Revisited
The original Scientific American article on the Semantic Web appeared in 2001. It described the evolution of a Web that consisted largely of documents for humans to read to one that included data and information for computers to manipulate. The Semantic Web is a Web of actionable information--information derived from data through a semantic theory for interpreting the symbols.This simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized. Shopbots and auction bots abound on the Web, but these are essentially handcrafted for particular tasks; they have little ability to interact with heterogeneous data and information types. Because we haven't yet delivered large-scale, agent-based mediation, some commentators argue that the Semantic Web has failed to deliver. We argue that agents can only flourish when standards are well established and that the Web standards for expressing shared meaning have progressed steadily over the past five years. Furthermore, we see the use of ontologies in the e-science community presaging ultimate success for the Semantic Web--just as the use of HTTP within the CERN particle physics community led to the revolutionary success of the original Web. This article is part of a special issue on the Future of AI.
1541-1672
96-101
Shadbolt, Nigel
5c5acdf4-ad42-49b6-81fe-e9db58c2caf7
Berners-Lee, Tim
5a589ebb-05c1-43fa-b49e-c0b70739b3dd
Hall, Wendy
11f7f8db-854c-4481-b1ae-721a51d8790c
Shadbolt, Nigel
5c5acdf4-ad42-49b6-81fe-e9db58c2caf7
Berners-Lee, Tim
5a589ebb-05c1-43fa-b49e-c0b70739b3dd
Hall, Wendy
11f7f8db-854c-4481-b1ae-721a51d8790c

Shadbolt, Nigel, Berners-Lee, Tim and Hall, Wendy (2006) The Semantic Web Revisited. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21 (3), 96-101. (doi:10.1109/MIS.2006.62).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The original Scientific American article on the Semantic Web appeared in 2001. It described the evolution of a Web that consisted largely of documents for humans to read to one that included data and information for computers to manipulate. The Semantic Web is a Web of actionable information--information derived from data through a semantic theory for interpreting the symbols.This simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized. Shopbots and auction bots abound on the Web, but these are essentially handcrafted for particular tasks; they have little ability to interact with heterogeneous data and information types. Because we haven't yet delivered large-scale, agent-based mediation, some commentators argue that the Semantic Web has failed to deliver. We argue that agents can only flourish when standards are well established and that the Web standards for expressing shared meaning have progressed steadily over the past five years. Furthermore, we see the use of ontologies in the e-science community presaging ultimate success for the Semantic Web--just as the use of HTTP within the CERN particle physics community led to the revolutionary success of the original Web. This article is part of a special issue on the Future of AI.

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Published date: July 2006
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 262614
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/262614
ISSN: 1541-1672
PURE UUID: 7e3ebe5b-58b2-462a-88a2-5291ffd84092
ORCID for Wendy Hall: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4327-7811

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Date deposited: 22 May 2006
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:33

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Contributors

Author: Nigel Shadbolt
Author: Tim Berners-Lee
Author: Wendy Hall ORCID iD

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