Has the Semantic Web Arrived?

This is a question that brings up memories of Passover and the story of the four sons: the wise son, the wicked son, the simple son and the one too young to even ask a question. When pondering the reality and complexities of the semantic web, until becoming a technology entrepreneur I clearly was the "son too young" - I didn't even know enough to ask a question. But now, after 2+ years working with NLP, data structures, online reputation, etc., I think I've finally graduated to being the simple son. And boy, does that feel good. For better or worse, I've got some reasonably well-formed thoughts on the topic. I'd say that there is the precise Tim Berners-Lee conception of the semantic web, and my less machine-driven framework for how people can enjoy Web 3.0 services without the full-blown technological breakthroughs associated with Tim's vision. Per Wikipedia, the layperson's definition of the semantic web is:

...an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily. It derives from W3C director Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange.

At its core, the semantic web comprises a philosophy, a set of design principles,  collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the semantic web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that have yet to be implemented or realized. Other elements of the semantic web are expressed in formal specifications.  Some of these include Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, N-Triples), and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). All of which are intended to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain.

The essence of which is manifest in Tim Berners-Lee original vision of the semantic web back in 1999:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

I personally think Tim is right on. His is the right vision that will take shape and change the way we navigate and extract value from the Internet, over time. That said, are we there yet? If one believes what is coming out of Radar Networks, the answer is: almost. Business 2.0 just ran a very interesting story on Nova Spivak's company and the ground their covering to make Tim's vision of the semantic web a reality.

For all the wonders that today's Web can deliver to your fingertips -- the Norwegian word for ice cream, a seat on the next flight to Paris, the best price for a Clash CD -- it has a fundamental flaw.

It's basically a compendium of billions of text documents designed to be read by humans. You can search it for keywords, but the results aren't much use until you sort through them to find the page that has the info you want.

To take the Web to the next level -- to move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 -- the information in those documents will have to be turned into data that a machine can read and evaluate on its own. Only then will computers be able to take over tasks we now do by hand.

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Think of it as the difference between two dimensions and three dimensions. "People will see the Web start to become smarter," Spivack says. "Eventually it will have some reasoning capabilities built into it."

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The Web just isn't very smart yet; one webpage is the same as any other. It might have a higher Google ranking, but there's no distinction based on meaning.

The semantic Web in the Berners-Lee vision acts more like a series of connected databases, where all information resides in a structured form. Within that structure is a layer of description that adds meaning that the computer can understand. ("Semantics" is the branch of linguistics concerned with meaning.)

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"It's in the combination that the real power of this comes out," Coates says. "The mashup is an early example of the Web that is to come. Semantic technologies have not taken off as much as we'd hoped because people are finding more utility in other Web 2.0 technologies at the moment. The goal is the most important thing: reusable, repurposable, and reconnectable data. How we get there is not as important."

The shift to a semantic Web is still in its very early days. Spivack envisions a time line of five to seven years. But the shift is clearly under way. James Hendler, one of the coauthors of that seminal Scientific American article, sees the same dynamics he did when the Web was first forming.

Right. 5-7 years. While it seems to me that the semantic web is a worthy mission, just like AI, we need to keep things in perspective. Small wins are key. Given the complexity, mass and dynamism of unstructured data populating the Web, it is hard to see a clear path to the the ultimate solution, one that is robust enough to be developed today yet applicable to tomorrow's Internet. Suffice it to say, Nova and his colleagues have bitten off a lot, but if anyone can crack the case they surely can. I just think that advances in the semantic web will be very incremental, and that big strides in usability and power will be made through human/social means: tagging, recommendations, communities, better measures and applications of reputation, etc. We have already seen tremendous advances in ease-of-use and navigibility of the Web simply through these tools, tools that are available today and not dependent upon the "holy grail" of bleeding-edge algorithms, software and hardware. I'm not saying that Radar Networks isn't awesome and that they won't get there; I'm just not holding my breath waiting. I want to get more value out the Internet today and tomorrow, and my guess is that I'll continue to get more value today through simple, community-based tools and technologies than the semantic web. Just a hunch.