Understanding The Semantic Web
The first thing one has to realize when trying to understand what the semantic web is, is that it is different from Web 2.0. While both the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 are part of the World Wide Web, they serve two different purposes. Web 2.0 was designed with one thing in mind; people. Web 2.0 is all about the social aspect of the internet. It was designed in order to help people communicate. The standard of technology is less important for Web 2.0, as people don’t care as much about the technology but rather just and easy way to have social interaction with others over the internet.
The Semantic Web, on the other hand, is designed for machines. While the Web needs a human operator to run it, by using computer systems, it is not possible for a computer to do tasks such as search for information without a human to guide it. The Semantic Web;s focus is to change this fact by creating Web page data so that computers can understand it, instead of needing a human to understand it first. With this being successful, the need of humans to help operate computers would be eliminated, or at the very least minimized.
This does not go to say that the Semantic Web is completely separate from the World Wide Web, but it is an extension. this extension adds new data and metadada to Web documents that previously existed. This extension is what will allow machines to process data on its own or manually. Resource Description Framework is used to complete this transformation.
The Semantic Web is most popularly used in the fields of research and life sciences. Twine is one application that has been built with this technology, along with the Joost online television service, and the Oracle Technology Network.
All information used to write this article was provided by the following website:
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2007/Semantic_Web.asp
