Tag: Web Evolution

We want everybody to communicate freely by crossing the barriers of language differences and cultural variety. This is the commonly agreed upon ultimate goal of the Semantic Web. How we are to realize the Semantic Web in particular is, however, another story. Typically, there are two thoughts on how to achieve this common goal. One thought is to build a web of data; the other is to build a web of agents. Nevertheless, these two thoughts approach the same goal and represent two different philosophies. This philosophical difference may eventually determine the fate of these two approaches.

Continue reading Abandon Babel, Welcome Society: The Philosophy Behind Semantic Web Approaches

Yihong Ding released the 10th and final installment to his series A View of Web Evolution. In the final installment of the series Yihong poses the question of how we will know when we've finally reached the next stage in Web evolution.

Continue reading Yihong Ding Wraps-Up "A View of Web Evolution" Series

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)

Continue reading The Calm Before the Semantic Web Storm

Yihong Ding (contributing author of this blog) has posted the fourth installment to his thought provocing series A View of Web Evolution. In this installment Yihong states that there exist natural mappings between the stages of web evolution and the stages on human growth. He goes on to describe the life stages of web nodes beginning with Web 1.0 nodes as newborn babies, Web 2.0 nodes as pre-school kids, and Semantic Web nodes as educated children.

The entire series is an engaging read and I suggest to everyone that hasn't already read it to do so!

Lately we've been talking a bit about Web evolution, and right now we're tossing back and forth the idea of grassroots vs. ivory towers. In that entry I described the belief Yihong and I have that the grassroots (developers) will need to take the reins so to speak from the ivory towers (W3C, purely academic research, etc) in order to ensure its adoption.

Continue reading The Pragmatic Semantic Web and Web Evolution

This post is a complement to the grassroots vs. ivory towers discussion. In the previous post, James mentioned two trends of realizing the dream of the Semantic Web. While the grassroots way encourages the wider adoption of the Semantic Web, the ivory-tower way stimulates the construction of Semantic Web standards. Besides all of these, these two sides indeed play different roles in weaving the Web — the destiny of web evolution.

Continue reading Weaving the Thread-Driven Semantic Web

The most pertinent issue surrounding the Semantic Web is why it has not yet gained strong traction from the development community. First, when I say grassroots I'm referring to the initiative of people like you and I to create the Semantic Web from the bottom-up. The ivory towers is the W3C and their initiative to create the Semantic Web. Both groups are pivotal to the acceptance and adoption of new standards and technologies. Without grassroots initiatives we would not have adoption and without the W3C we would not have standards (which we all have learned the Web most certainly requires).

Continue reading Moving Towards the Semantic Web: Grassroots vs. Ivory Towers

There is a contradiction. The dream of the Semantic Web is beautiful, but few people are willing to realize it initiatively. The reason is primarily due to the pitiful nature of the selfishness of mankind; we prefer to enjoy contributions from others rather than contributing to others in the first hand. Some pessimistic ones of us, such as Stephen Downs and Mor Naaman, had even sentenced the Semantic Web to death due to this reason. Others of us, however, also cannot avoid but only try to solve this contradiction, actively and optimistically.

Continue reading Satisfying the Nature of Selfishness: The Key to Initiate the Semantic Web

The discussion of semantic search has gradually become popular. Just not long time ago, semantic search was thought to be barely a little bit more than a dream. At present, optimistic researchers have started to believe its possibility in the near future. Very recently at Read/WriteWeb, Dr. Riza C. Berkan, the CEO of Hakia (a company declared to perform "semantic search"), posted an article about semantic search that attracted much attention. Despite of agreeing with the post, here are more thoughts about semantic search.

Continue reading Semantic search has two legs