The Semantic Web is an idea of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee that the Web as a whole can be made more intelligent and perhaps even intuitive about how to serve a users needs. Although search engines index much of the Web's content, they have little ability to select the pages that a user really wants or needs. Berners-Lee foresees a number of ways in which developers and authors, singly or in collaborations, can use self-descriptions and other techniques so that the context-understanding programs can selectively find what users want.
The Semantic Web: Crafting Infrastructure for Agency presents a more holistic view of the current state of development and deployment. This a comprehensive reference to the rapidly developing technologies, which are enabling more intelligent and automated transactions over the internet, and a visionary overview of the implications of deploying such a layer of infrastructure.
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A through examination of the Semantic Web, including the following topics: web information management, languages and protocols, application and tools, and collaboration and agency.
This is a book that could fall into several different reader categories – popular, academic, technical – with perhaps delusional ambitions of being both an overview and a detailed study of emerging technology. The idea of writing
The Semantic Web grew out of my previous two books,
The Wiki Way (Addison-Wesley, 2001) and
Peer to Peer (Addison-Wesley, 2002). It seemed a natural progression, going from open co-authoring on the Web to open peersharing and communication, and then onto the next version of the Web, involving peercollaboration between both software agents and human users.
Started in 2002, this book had a longer and far more difficult development process than the previous two. Quite honestly, there were moments when I despaired of its completion and publication. The delay of publication until 2005, however, did bring some advantages, mainly in being able to incorporate much revised material that otherwise would have been waiting for a second edition.
The broader ‘Semantic Web’ as a subject still remains more of a grand vision than an established reality. Technology developments in the field are both rapid and unpredictable, subject to many whims of fate and fickle budget allocations.
The technologies described in this book will define the next generation Internet and Web. They may conceivably define much of your future life and lifestyle as well, just as the present day Web has become central to the daily activities of many – the author included. Therefore, it seems fitting also to contemplate the broader implications of the technologies, both for personal convenience and as instigator or mediator of social change.
