Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Senior Research Scientist, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
The Semantic Web is a global Web of data expressed as a graph of relationships. Currently, basic data formats are maturing, ontology standards are in the works, and standards for rules and inference, and the exchange of proofs are at various stages of research and advanced development. At LCS/W3C, the RDF graph language has been extended ("Notation3") to express inference rules. Practical experience in using these for personal information management, and also in the Annotea distributed annotation system provide one set of challenges, while attempts to define a formal system which unifies all the various systems used by others provide another set. Can rules be interchanged between inference systems and database systems? Can one publish a statement on the Web with any form of absolute meaning? How can one best prototype a future vast system of heterogeneous knowledge bases?
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
200 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA, USA 02139
tel:+1.617.253.2613
http://www.w3.org