INTERNET:

The Next Weave of the Web?
Tim Berners-Lee, chief architect of the World Wide Web, has a new vision for the Internet called the "Semantic Web"

ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1990, Tim Berners-Lee switched on the world's first website server. Even though he had invented it, the event wasn't particularly momentous for him, mainly because his wife was about to have their first baby. But Berners-Lee had a pretty shrewd idea it had the potential to be far-reaching. For one thing, he had considered forming a start-up and patenting the technology used to create what would become the greatest software innovation of the last decades of the 20th century. But he decided against doing so. Berners-Lee wanted to make the world a richer place, not line his own pockets. So he gave his brainchild to us all instead.

Along with his colleagues in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Berners-Lee now plans to give us an even grander gift: A next generation Web that looks set to be the most important software development of this decade and beyond. Berners-Lee regards today's Web as limited. And by 2005, he hopes to begin replacing it with what he calls the "Semantic Web" - a smart network that, amongst other things, will revolutionize our ability to search on the Web.

Software messengers
Even with a fairly basic version of this future Web, mining online repositories for specific chunks of knowledge would no longer force people to wade through screen after screen of irrelevant search results. Instead, computers would dispatch intelligent agents, or software messengers, to explore websites by the thousands and sift out only what is relevant, be it a web page or digital object. That in itself would provide a major boost in productivity in the workplace, at study, and at home. But there's a good deal more potential. Software agents could also take on many routine business chores, such as helping manufacturers find and negotiate with lowest-cost parts suppliers and handle help-desk questions.

Lateral thinking
The Semantic Web would also be a boon to creative, lateral modes of thinking. Most inventions and scientific breakthroughs, including today's Web, sprang from novel combinations of existing knowledge. The Semantic Web would make it possible to evaluate more combinations than anyone could dream of in a lifetime.

A lot of scientific research is now interdisciplinary (such as global climate change) which means scientists need to talk to each other. Currently, scientists can post ideas on the Web for others to read. But with machines doing the reading and translating jargon terms, related ideas from millions of Web pages could be distilled and summarized very quickly. That would lift the ability to assess, integrate, and think creatively about information to new heights.

New age of enlightenment?
Berners-Lee believes this will result in a new age of enlightenment. "[The Semantic Web] will help more people become intuitive as well as more analytical," he predicts. "It will foster global collaborations among people with diverse cultural perspectives, so we have a better chance of finding the right solutions to the really big issues - like the environment and climate warming."

In short, he thinks the Semantic Web stands to change the world even more than his original creation did.

Not surprisingly, critics see Berners-Lee and his W3C colleagues as being too visionary. Uttam M. Narsu, an analyst at Giga Information Group, for instance, says: "They're devoting too much effort to the Semantic Web, believing it will change the world yet again, and not enough effort to less sexy things that are important to business in the near term."

Growing numbers of companies, however, are right behind Berners-Lee. Adobe Systems, for instance, are building products with Semantic Web hooks (tags).

"That's basically because one person 'got it' [at Adobe]," says Berners-Lee. "And because he got it, Adobe's software metadata is being organized around RDF [Resource Description Framework, a convention for using XML to express the relationship between data]. They're using Web ontology-level power for managing documents. Now the information in PDF files can be understood by other software even if the software doesn't know what a PDF document is or how to display it."

DARPA backing
One other vote of confidence could give Berners-Lee's vision an enormous boost: The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is backing it. This is the organization that created the bones of the Internet three decades ago. In 1998, it launched the DARPA Agent MarkUp Language (DAML) program, which is being developed in concert with XML (Extensible Markup Language). The goal of the program is to create technologies that enable software agents to identify, communicate with, and understand other software agents dynamically (i.e., on the fly, while the computer application is running).

DARPA wants to develop these agent-based systems for command-and-control jobs in joint military operations, whether they are multi-service or multi-national. For example, an international team of 16 organizations - led by a spin-off of Britain's Ministry of Defense called QinetiQ Ltd - is working on a "coalition of agents" project. With DAML tags pointing to online databases, plus access to satellite reconnaissance images, the agents would be aware of the capabilities and locations of the many different weapons and logistics systems deployed to spots such as Afghanistan. So they could provide commanders with instant advice for coping with changing conditions in the field.

Feet firmly in the real world
DARPA is also funding research at MIT, headed by Berners-Lee but separate from the W3C, aimed at creating new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for tomorrow's Web. One result would be Semantic Web Logic Language (Swell). Another goal is to marry the Semantic Web with MIT's Oxygen project, which aims to make various digital systems genuinely easy and intuitive to use, thanks to advanced machine-learning tricks and new AI software.

All in all, such funding shows that Berners-Lee should not be dismissed as a visionary without feet in the real world.

DCLnews Editorial

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