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05/24/2006 05:26 PMA 'more revolutionary' Web - Print Version - International Herald TribunePage 1 of 3http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/05/23/business/web.php
A 'more revolutionary' Web
By Victoria Shannon International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2006
EDINBURGH
Just when the ideasbehind "Web 2.0" are starting to enter into the mainstream, the mass of brainsbehind the World Wide Web isintroducing pieces of what may end upbeing called Web 3.0."Twenty years from now, we'll look backand say this was the embryonicperiod," said Tim Berners-Lee, 50, whoestablished the programming languageof the Web in 1989 with colleagues atCERN, the European science institute."The Web is only going to get morerevolutionary," he told delegatesTuesday at the opening of the 15thannual International World Wide WebConference.While Berners-Lee shrugs at the use of the term "Web 2.0" - a Silicon Valley buzzword todescribe the Internet since the dot-com bust of the turn of the century - he does say he sees anew level of vigor across the network.To many in technology, Web 2.0 means an Internet that is even more interactive, customized,social and media-intensive - not to mention profitable - than the one of a decade ago.It is a change apparent with multilayered media databases like Google Maps, software programsthat run inside Web browsers like the collaboration-friendly word processor Writely, high-volumecommunity forums like MySpace, and so-called social search tools like Yahoo Answers.But the software specialists, technology executives and entrepreneurs attending the conference inEdinburgh are looking beyond that, focusing on another - though less user-friendly - catchphrase:the semantic Web, another brainchild of Berners-Lee.In this version of the Web, sites, links, media and databases are "smarter" and able toautomatically convey more meaning than those of today.For example, Berners-Lee said, a Web site that announces a conference would also containprogramming with a lot of related information embedded within it.A user could click on a link and immediately transfer the time and date of the conference to his or her electronic calendar. The location - address, latitude, longitude, perhaps even altitude - couldbe sent to his or her GPS device, and the names and biographies of others invited could be sentto an instant messenger list.
 
05/24/2006 05:26 PMA 'more revolutionary' Web - Print Version - International Herald TribunePage 2 of 3http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/05/23/business/web.php
In other words, the "mark-up" language behind each Web page would be cross-referenced intocountless other databases, once developers agreed on a common set of definitions.Much of that foundation has been established over the past several years by the World Wide WebConsortium, a technical standards and policy group headed by Berners-Lee.Now comes the effort to push Web developers to adopt the components and put them intosoftware, services and sites, said Nigel Shadbolt, a professor who teaches artificial intelligence atthe University of Southampton in England."There is an obvious place for the semantic Web in life sciences, in medicine, in industrialresearch," Shadbolt said, and that is where most of the focus is today."We're looking for communities of information users to show them the benefits," he said. "It's anevolutionary process."The big question is whether it will move on next to businesses or consumers, he said. Aconsequence of an open and diffuse Internet, he noted, is that unexpected outcomes can emergefrom unanticipated places.For instance, some early experiments in highlighting new relationships from existing Web datahave come out of Flickr, a photo-sharing site that members categorize themselves, and FOAF,which stands for "friend of a friend," a research project to describe the various links betweenpeople.Both add "meaning" where such context did not exist before, just by changing the underlyingprogramming to reflect links between databases, Shadbolt said."Over a 5-to-10-year time frame, I think you are going to see increasing amounts of this semanticWeb integration," he said.Patrick Sheehan, a partner in 3i Investments, a venture capital firm based in London, saidinvestment was beginning to follow the "blue sky" period of big dreams for the semantic Web. Hiscompany financed two such early-stage companies this year, both in Britain."You can now say 'semantic Web' without getting a totally blank stare back," Sheehan said,adding that he had seen "several, not hundreds," of proposals. "The technology is still mostlycoming out of the universities. But these companies are real, solving real problems - they're not just doing research."Garlik, based in Richmond, England, and listing Mike Harris, the chief executive of the online bankEgg, as its chairman, aims to use semantic programming to manage personal information online.OmPrompt, of Oxfordshire, focuses on message-driven trading communities.Sheehan believes that Europe, particularly at places like the University of Southampton, is leadingthe world in semantic Web research, though it remains to be seen whether the region can be assuccessful at commercializing it.Not that anyone is counting, but Berners-Lee, whose work at CERN was inspired by a desire toshare research papers widely among physicists, sees only two distinct versions of his Web: theWeb of documents, which emerged in the 1990s, and the Web of data, which will be the result of the semantic programming languages."People keep asking what Web 3.0 is," Berners-Lee said. "I think maybe when you've got anoverlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty - on Web 2.0and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you'll have access to anunbelievable data resource."
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