The Semantic Web, also known loosely as Web 3, is a project that intends to create a universal medium for information exchange by putting documents with computer-processable meaning (semantics) on the World Wide Web. Currently under the direction of the Web’s creator, Tim Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web Consortium, the Semantic Web extends the Web through the use of standards, markup languages and related processing tools.
Essentially, the Semantic Web is a web of data. There is lots of data we use every day, and its not part of the web. I can see my bank statements on the web, and my photographs, and I can see my appointments in a calendar. But can I see my photos in a calendar to see what I was doing when I took them? Can I see bank statement lines in a calendar?
Why not? Because we don’t have a web of data. Because data is controlled by applications, and each application keeps it to itself.
The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for interchange of data, where on the original Web we only had interchange of documents. Also it is about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.
Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Swedish word for “car”, to reserve a library book, or to search for the cheapest DVD and buy it. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The Semantic Web is a project aimed to make web pages understandable by computers, so that they can search websites and perform actions in a standardised way.
The potential benefits are that computers can harness the enormous network of information and services on the Web. A computer could, for example, automatically find the nearest manicurist or book an appointment that fits a person’s schedule.
Currently there is much data on our computers which we cannot browse, or process by, for example, pulling into a spreadsheet, graphing it or joining it with other data. This includes personal data like calendars, playlists, GPS coordinates, and bank statements; enterprise product and workflow and resources; and public data such as weather, events and the properties of materials.
A lot of the things that could be done with the Semantic Web could also be done without it, and indeed already are done in some cases, but the Semantic Web provides a standard which makes such services far easier to implement.