xml-dev - RE: Description of Semantic Web (was Re: Is it just me...)

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 10:33 AM 10/19/00 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>Can you summarize that here for us so we 
>can compare it to the understanding that 
>it is simply an RDF service to other 
>objects in the system?  If it is this, 
>then I think it is another service to  
>business objects to quickly narrow the 
>scope of a resource discovery process.

"Weaving the Web" describes the Semantic Web over the course of several
chapters, and I'm not sure that even those chapters provide the level of
detail that many folks on this list would like to see.

I'd be willing to quote from the book, but I've asked Tim BL for permission
to do that, since it would likely require some fairly large chunks and I
don't think I'm necessarily the right person to be selecting which chunks.

I'll quote a small piece from Chapter 12, 'Mind to Mind', where he
introduces the term, though.

>I have a dream for the Web . . . and it has two parts.
>
>In the first part, the Web becomes a much more powerful means
>for collaboration between people. [...]
>
>In the second part of the dream, collaborations extend to computers.
>Machines 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,
>leaving humans to provide the inspiration and inuition. The intelligent
>"agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.  This
>machine-understandable Web will come about through the implementation
>of a series of technical advancements and social agreements that are
>now beginning (and which I describe in the next chapter.)

I strongly recommend that anyone really interested in the wide range of
Semantic Web issues buy this book, if only to get an outline of what
exactly Tim BL is describing.  

In the US, it's ISBN 0-06-251586-1, from Harper SanFrancisco. Paperback is
ISBN 006251587X from Harper Business, coming in November.

In the UK, it's already in paperback, at ISBN 1587990180 from TEXERE
Publishing.  Hardcover is 0752820907, from Orion Publishing.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books