WWW
The World Wide Web is undoubtedly one of the most astonishing inventions humankind has ever produced. It may be a slight exaggeration to say that all human knowledge is now at our fingertips, but there is an incredible amount of information on the web, of all sorts. If your interests are in music, science, politics, sport, religion, films, history, and if you are one of the 600 million users, then it is all there for you. And for people living in the developing world, remote areas or under oppressive dictatorships, sometimes the web is the only source of information.
But are we approaching the limits of the web? It’s hard to conceive how big the web is. But imagine 100 million pick-up trucks filled with books. That’s how much information is stored on the web. Imagine 50,000 libraries like the University of Southampton Library. It’s that big.
Finding the needle you want in a haystack like the web can be very hard. Search engines like Google or Yahoo are excellent, but even they struggle in the face of this incredible quantity of information. But perhaps help is at hand.
The Semantic Web is the next generation of the World Wide Web. The idea behind the Semantic Web, like the web itself, is very simple, but the effects could be just as far-reaching.
The Semantic Web allows you to tell your computer what a web page, or information on the web, is all about. Which means that your computer can do some of the thinking for you.
So, whereas Google can search and find 20,000 pages that you might be interested in, a search using Semantic Web technology might find the 50 you actually want, and tell you which are the most important. On the Semantic Web, your computer might organise and book your holiday, find useful pages for revision, or find and pay for music , films, books and magazines to download.
Like the web itself, the Semantic Web is the brainchild of Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, who also holds a Chair in the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science.