The Calm Before the Semantic Web Storm
Published 11 months ago by James Simmons
Richard McManus of Read/Write Web just posted an insightful list of future web trends. I like this list for three reasons:
- The Semantic Web is listed as the #1 future Web trend
- Richard is a huge player in Camp Web 2.0
- I agree with every item on the list (though not necessarily what was said about them)
I'm not surprised to see the Semantic Web as the #1 future Web trend, simply because I feel it's a natural and necessary step in Web evolution. I'm happy to see this kind of enthusiasm and promotion coming from someone from the other team, and I think it just goes to show that a comparison between the two camps is unnecessary because the Semantic Web will supersede all current embodiments of the Web.
Richard states that the Semantic Web has been the next big thing for a long time, having attained an almost mythical status. It's true in a way, at least for people not working on creating the Semantic Web. We live in a pretty tight bubble, but we're finally breaking back through.
Figure 1
In the graph above we can see that the peak of interest in the Semantic Web (as far as Google search traffic is concerned) was in 1994 and interest has slowly (seemingly?) been lost by the masses. This was actually a blessing of sorts. The Semantic Web is an incredible initiative. I believe the calm we've been graced with over the past few years is going to end soon as we've steadily ironed out the issues related to the Semantic Web.
About the author
It's my goal to help bring about the Semantic Web. I also like to explore related topics like natural language processing, information retrieval, and web evolution. I'm the primary author of Semantic Focus and I'm currently working on several Semantic Web projects.
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Posted by Venkat on September 8, 2007 at 8:53am
Thanks for the pointer. Where I work (Xerox research), Semantic Web research has progressed in fits and starts for a long time (PARC just licensed semantic-y technology to Powerset recently, but the technology is decades old). But finally, those of us arguing internally for a more strategic role for semantic technologies are starting to be heard. I am not a computer scientist (systems and controls actually), but I've been thinking about the application possibilities of semantic technology for a while, and finally the right collaborations are starting to happen. I'd be cautious though -- there are some deep problems that don't seem to get addressed, and if the main semweb mailing list is any indication, most of the direct researchers have their heads buried in the weeds of technical details and are not adequately addressing the fundamental application/practical problems (example: addressing the issues raised by the famous meta-crap article). I am still an optimist though. Good blog. I haven't yet written on SemWeb on my blog (primarily because I find it hard to think of stuff to say that doesn't reveal proprietary stuff, but maybe I'll figure out some higher-level commentary points).
Posted by James on September 12, 2007 at 1:41am
It's good that you bring up how researchers are buried in the technical details of the Semantic Web. I'm hoping that this just kind of goes with the current phase of the Semantic Web's development. Once more researchers get their heads around all the technical issues we should start to see more people focus on the issues not yet touched upon, including adoption and how businesses will use the coming wave of semantic technologies. There's much more than the technical side to take into consideration. I imagine many of the issues we deal with in the Web today will have some kind of new semantic counter-part problem.
Posted by C.Nilavamudhan on September 12, 2007 at 3:51am
sir, can we apply semantic web to Bioinformatics? How? kindly reply me
Posted by Venkat on September 13, 2007 at 4:38pm
So perhaps you can post a few pieces on what you see are the top 2-3 fundamental, application, and business model problems of the SemWeb. I have my own ideas, but I'd like to hear an insider opinion first :)
Posted by James on September 13, 2007 at 4:51pm
I'm like the Semantic Web's DJ, taking requests ;) I'd love to write on the topic, consider it queued!