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t the heart of the Semantic Web is the philosophy that the world’s information can be rationalized. Such a noble proposition extends from our innate desire to make sense of the world around us, and isn't unique to just the narrow section of the Artificial Intelligence community which co-founded the Semantic Web. With this worldview comes the assertion of a universal truth, an all-conquering, logical explanation for any particular domain of discourse; a formalized ontology of the world around us. [1]
The vision of the Semantic Web is to create such digitized ontologies† of the world’s digitized information as a means to enable computers to work in an unprecedented automated and rational fashion. With these ontologies, we will be able to dictate information (i.e. metadata) which is meaningful to computers. Combining this data with computer-understandable semantics will provide the framework to stimulate a ‘revolution of new possibilities’ [2] and bring an unseen synergy across the chaotic landscape of the internet, where applications and services currently operate in explicitly defined boundaries of interoperability. read on...