the Semantic Web

The 'semantic web' is a term used to describe data that can be made sense of and actually analysed by machines, on a global scale. If standardised data is created that computers can interpret, the theory is, that complex questions would be able
to be answered by computers, rather than just retrieving data based on keywords, as happens now. The semantic web is seen as the next evolution of the Web and referred to by some as Web 3.0.

In some applications I'm sure this would be useful, but rue the day that we rely on computers to 'answer' all our questions ( maybe many already do with Google!) Making meaning is such a subjective thing, with so many variants coming into play, so the data would have to be complex indeed. Standardising the data to enable this to happen would inevitably cut out subtleties of meaning wouldn't it? I will watch these new developments with interest to see where this journey leads.

There's an interesting article by Richard Adhikari Revisiting Semantic Web's Pros and Cons that you may like to have a look at. It's also where I got the nifty little graphic from that heads this post.