In 2001, Tim Berners Lee wrote an article for Scientific American magazine that opened up a new discussion about how the web needed to be more interlinked as it increased to a gargantuan size. Their theory was based upon the following criteria:
To date, the World Wide Web has developed most rapidly as a medium of documents for people rather than of information that can be manipulated automatically. By augmenting Web pages with data targeted at computers and by adding documents solely for computers, we will transform the Web into the Semantic Web.
■ Computers will find the meaning of semantic data by following hyperlinks to definitions of key terms and rules for reasoning about them logically. The resulting infrastructure will spur the development of automated Web services such as highly functional agents.
■ Ordinary users will compose Semantic Web pages and add new definitions and rules using off-the-shelf software that will assist with semantic markup.
The article is a fascinating read from one of the foremost proponents of Semantic Web, and made all the more fascinating as it’s from way back in 2001.
Please click the link to download the PDF. All rights are owned by Scientific American.
