Understanding the Semantic Web

The internet, along with its most public face -the Web- has become the biggest store of information that has ever existed. A kind of great library of Alexandria for the modern era, with the idiosyncrasy that each of us (members of the first world) can contribute in its growth. These days the internet constitutes a Collective Memory for Humanity, far beyond the humble ambitions of those who originally created and supported it some 30 years ago. The Web has revolutionised the way we live and work, giving us access to any kind of material at any moment in any place in the world. Nonetheless, this uncontrolled growth also brings with it certain problems: we are unable to get through its publications, keep up with all its novelties, sort out the most interesting ones, summarise them or make much use of them. Today, the advantage taken from such an immense potential is very limited, and the biggest brake on its explosion as a useful tool are the users ourselves, that is to say our human capacity to assimilate it all.

The parents of today’s Web, together with big businesses and international bodies, such as the W3C or the European Union, are promoting a solution for this content explosion, so that IT programs look and organise internet information for us. In other words, to change today’s idea of the WEB as a document repository made for and by humans into an intelligent space capable of carrying out certain tasks. This initiative, called the Semantic Web, involves creating digital content which can be understood by software agents. The first results of this initiative came together to produce the Web 2.0, which is ‘social’ and shares out the creation of digital resources amongst users, creating labelled content.

The Semantic Web, in its first conception, incorporates advanced applications that will comprehend users’ needs and preferences and will work for them using the Net’s digital resources. Starting from search engines which find precisely the right information, and thus breaking with the current method of retrieving whole documents in favour of looking for answers to concrete questions, intelligent applications which are able to construe new information and working with it, and even build and integrate applications scattered around the world.