Seeds of the Semantic Web

Dan Connolly, W3C

ALA Midwinter Meeting 2000
January 2000, San Antonio, TX

Overview

The Revolutions

The HTML Revolution: Hypertext Goes Global

The XML Revolution: Plans

Shared costs:

The XML Revolution: Plans (cont.)

XML is the ASCII of the future.
--Tim Bray
XML Files, Oct 1998

XML is a simple data format that balances the needs of people to read/write data with needs of machine to read/write data.

The XML Revolution: Hopes

I want my data back.
--Jon Bosak

Stepping Back...

Origin and Goals of the Web

  1. Human communication thru shared knowledge
    Working together: Social efficiency, understanding and scaling
  2. Exploitation of computing power in real life

Why W3C?

Leading the Web to its Full Potential

About W3C

W3C Activities: What We Do

W3C Process: How We Work

See also: W3C Process

Looking Ahead...

XML in a Nutshell

XML balances the needs of people to read/write data with needs of machine to read/write data.

<elementName attributeName="value">
<empty /> </elementName>

Stupid Data

<product>
 <description>Blue Widget</description>
 <price>1.25</price>
 <size>4</size>
</product>

What's wrong with this picture?

Why Stupid Data Hurts

Grounding Terms in the Web

<product
   xmlns:w="http://www.acme.com/2000/specs"
   xmlns="http://www.ali.org/1992/commercial-code"> <!--*-->
 <description>Blue Widget</description>
 <price currency="USD">1.25</price>
 <w:size>4</w:size>
</product>

* The American Law Institute hasn't published the Uniform Commercial Code on the web, but the Cornell Legal Information Institute published a hypertext version.

Stupid Database Exchange: Travel

What's wrong with this picture?

Really Smart Data: RDF

<color>blue</color>

<specific-gravity>4.5</specific-gravity>

you know what that means... sort of.

RDF: Knowledge Primitives

<substance>
<atomic-number>54</atomic-number>
<specific-gravity>4.5</specific-gravity>
</substance>

RDF: Graph Merging

<PDA:event>
<dc:coverage>2000-01-15</dc:coverage>
<pda:import href="http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes?show=23ou209"/> </PDA:event> <movie about="http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes?show=23ou209"> <dc:coverage>2000-01-15T2300Z</dc:coverage> <dc:title>Life is Beautiful</dc:title>
<ucc:price currency="USD">7.50</ucc:price> </movie>

Knowledge of Communities Large and Small

I want my machine to understand about...

notes