I first heard of The Semantic Web about a month ago in Mountain View, California at the Computer History Museum. I met someone named Joseph Pally, an inventor and entrepreneur with a company called Z-Cubes. He told me that the web is evolving to become more and more intelligent, and that some day it will achieve a level of knowledge called wisdom. This reminded me of the "Oracle" character in the movie Code 46; an omniscient machine that knows better than humans what is best for them.
It turns out the Semantic Web is not all science fiction. Back in New York City, I found a Meet-Up Group of Semantic Web enthusiasts. I got "semanticized" at one of their meetings last night near Manhattan's Madison Square Park.
Berliner turned New Yorker Marco Neumann has successfully semanticized almost 1200 members since he started the group in 2005. More than "just another Technology Meet-Up," he seeks to bring together people who have problems that could be solved by Semantic Web technology.
The types of problems that the Semantic Web can solve relate to how information is connected.
Practical RDF in a Publishing Environment - Barbara McGlamery:
When speaker Barbara McGlamery, an ontologist, worked at Time, Inc., her specific problem was how to connect content from every story they published. The Semantic Web helped her to answer one of society's most important questions: Who has Brad Pitt been in a relationship with? This is a surprisingly difficult question for a machine to understand, and through semantic technology web developers are actively exploring the best way to represent this question so a computer can process it.
RDA and the Open Metadata Registry - John Phipps:
Humanity has been struggling with how best to organize information since ancient times. More recently, we've relied on the card catalog system to keep human knowledge ordered. Today, the card catalog has been replaced by the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). John Phipps of MetaData Management described his efforts to bring all of the world's databases together to make them more freely accessible with the Semantic Web. This task faces both technical and political challenges as all of the organizations, or "silos," as Phipps calls them, struggle to communicate and agree on a standard.
Fellow NYU student Kate Ray is making a documentary about the Semantic Web. Check out her blog.
Friday, November 13, 2009
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