The idea of the Semantic Web has been around for a few years but despite repeated efforts, I never managed to fully grasp what it was about as definitions were always cluttered with technical and obscure acronyms such as RDF, FOAF, URI, OWL etc. From a user’s perspective, what is it going to do for me, how will it work differently? Last week’s #PLENK2010 readings and discussions generated a proliferation of new terms trying to define what the future web will look like, highlighting the fact that the new web 3.0/Xweb/eXtended Web is still a work in progress.
My attempt to make sense of the new web has been to try and visualize various perspectives using Wordle.net. This approach is more intuitive than anything else, but I still think it delivers meaningful results. First of all, I went back to Tim Berners Lee’s seminal article on the Semantic Web published in 2001 in Scientific American where the language used remains technical and machine based.
The Semantic Web is concerned with information. Code, data, programs and agents are manupulating pages, content, databases and ontologies following rules, concepts and languages. Processes are automated and the people/physical/human intervention remains minimal.
Kate Ray, a NYU student, posted an excellent short video introduction to Web 3.0 with interviews of several researchers, including Tim Berners Lee (Thanks to Eva Birger for bringing this video to the Plenker’s attention). Pasting the transcript of the interviews into Wordle provides a better clue of what the Web 3.0 is about.
The new incarnation of the Semantic Web is still about dealing with information, or things, or data…well, that’s what the panel “thinks” anyway, but it is different and people play a greater part. Ontologies have receded to the background, to be replaced by the need to sort, to label, to filter, to create meaninful relationships between words, ideas, things and stuff, to make sense of the world.
Finally, I mashed up four recent blog posts or presentations dealing with Web 3.0 and the xWeb with an educational perspective (namely Web 3.0: the way forward? by Steve Wheeler, The eXtended Web and the PLE by Rita Kop, xWeb and Web 3.0/xWeb by George Siemens).
New correlations are emerging I think with the new xWeb, and there is now a clear set of relationships between people, data, information and learning. But are people learning from the data to generate information, or is information derived from data about people? People, data, information are smart and intelligent, but there is now an obvious blur between the physical and virtual (augmented? extended?) reality of the world. Technology, systems, the internet and mobile devices enable access to resources, applications and services. As well as that, the web allows open access to social and personal data about people. The xWeb is open. Might be a futile exercise. Interesting though.
I’m trying to grapple with understanding what’s happening with the semantic web too. Thanks for your post. I particularly liked your use of wordle to explore the concepts being expressed by different people on the topics. A nice visual contrast – which shows the similarities as well as the differences in focus. Cool.
Thanks for your comment. The three word clouds are available at this address: http://www.wordle.net/gallery?username=Plenk2010
Web 2.0 is a change in how we use the internet. A website is becoming a vital part of any organization if it wants to do business with Generation Y.