If you are anything like me, you have probably heard the terms web 3.0 or semantic thrown around somewhere. If you’re anything like me, your brain might gloss over as someone makes an attempt to start a discussion around sparkly Owls, naturally ontological language processing, RDFA, RuleML completeness decidability schemas … *ouch*.
I’ve been trying to learn more about semantics to see how it can help facilitate smarter search in knowledge bases and I thought I would share with you my voyage so far in the hopes that you can navigate the basics faster than I did. To do this, I will use the what/why/where methodology.
What?
- Web 1.0 – Static web pages that push information to you;
- Web 2.0 – A more collaborative approach where people share information of interest;
- Web 3.0 – A more structured approach that labels web data based on pre-defined rules (SkyNet?!)
Why?
Ok – SkyNet is a reference to the artificial intelligence that takes over the world in “The Terminator” movies. However, as we begin to label millions of pieces of data on the web, computers will be able to perform smart searches that would allow us to ask questions more naturally and bring back intelligent answers based on relationships, rather than the hit-and-miss keyword based searches we use today.
Want to get inspired?
Watch Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, preach the gospel of linked data. [YouTube]
How?
Well that’s a good question. Semantic technologies are still being developed, and it’s a challenge. This isn’t your grandfather’s HTML! Standards are coming together, but it’s more complicated than just publishing documents and using keywords to identify them. The challenge is getting the average user to understand how to easily put their content into RDFa, or Resource Description Framework standards.
Here’s a great starting point to learn more about RDFa Basics. [YouTube]
I think this video is outdated in some respects, but it essentially gives you the basic idea of how to implement Tim Berners-Lee’s vision by putting your data and relationships into RDF. Once this concept starts to solidify in your head, take the W3schools’ tutorial on RDF.
“Ok, I think I’m starting to get it. I’m an expert in my field of [insert music, food, telcom, etc.]” The next logical question is: How do you find existing linked data out there? And when you find it, how do you use it? How do you extend it? How do you plug it into your project? How do you build it if it doesn’t exist? Where do you put it when you’re done? How will other people use it?
That’s where I can’t help – yet. We are now deep into ontology. Creating data models and relationships for every piece of data is no easy task, however. I am reading a book titled “Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist (effective modeling in RDFS and OWL)” that a colleague suggested to me, and it proposes putting the RDFa framework into layman terms so that everyone can start to develop their content this way.
The web 3.0 revolution has already begun, however, and is backed by some of the top search networks in the work: Google, Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft). You can see how they’re hoping to achieve a more natural web at schema.org. I also recommend checking out this article on how Google uses Semantic-based recipes to deliver top recipe search results.
How is your quest to understand it all? Comment below, and if you have any tips to share, I’d love to hear them!
Micah Peterson
Business Analyst
