An important public symposium in the Semantic Web field was held last week in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, US), as part of the launch of a new research institute for Web Science, entitled Tetherless World Research Constellation. A number of leading figures such as Nova Spivack and Nigel Shadbolt were present, among those Tim Berners-Lee. The principal focus of Berners-Lee’s keynote speech was his future vision of the Web, for which he discussed a number of distinct aspects. Berners-Lee has never faltered to advocate his future Web vision as a semantic and social one. The formal scientific analysis of such outlooks has emerged as the field of Web Science, to which the new research centre is dedicated. The characteristics of the evolving Web which Berners-Lee outlined could be divided into various areas. One of the topics, which was also one of the general themes of the day, was the construction of more intelligent data, as opposed to smarter software. This is one of the objectives of the Semantic Web, which was introduced by Berners-Lee, however, adding that the conceptual links between data have the power to be used in unpredictable and novel ways. It has not yet emerged what the outcome of such opportunities will be, but the evolution of the Web is likely to have an impact on the traditional methods of constructing social systems. This was another one of the topics elaborated by Berners-Lee and other attendees.

The Web has spawned new social systems which have initiated new possibilities for viewing science and other political systems such as democracy. It is evident that with the advent of the Social Web, that networks can influence collective thinking, ideas or movements, which may be constructive but also destructive. The effect of such systems will be witnessed in the future.

 A further topic discussed was the requirement for existing technology to be able to cope with and complement the future form of the Web. If data and the concepts contained in data are interlinked, there arises a requirement for technologies to adapt to this data through more pages, higher bandwidth, and mobile devices. The filtration of the Web into daily life is an ongoing theme, which has previously been discussed by many of the leading researchers in the Semantic Web domain, which advocate and emphasize the role of the mobile Web. For example, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker. 

 http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/06/11/ap5106902.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2319807,00.asp

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The success and resulting growth of semantic technologies in corporate scenarios for a multitude of business planning and development tasks is becoming increasingly evident. Two important upcoming conferences on Semantic Web technologies will unveil and discuss the most recent technologies among such achievements. The 2008 Semantic Technology conference will be held from May 18-22 in San Jose, California, whose principal objectives include demonstrating Semantic Web technologies in a number of domains: government, healthcare, finance, semantic SOA, application development, and the TopBraid suite. Today, a press release revealed that 16 significant new semantic innovations would be exhibited at SemTech, including novel applications in Natural Language Processing and Text Analysis, Enterprise-wide Application Deployment and Integration; Data Searching, Sharing, and Tracking; Knowledge Modeling Solutions; Information Publishing and Data Provisioning; Open Source Community Initiatives; and Artificial Intelligence Functionality, in particular, a computer chip which claims to behave like a human brain by performing the behavior of a human brain: the capability to reason, think and analyze. Another important conference follows the SemTech conference – the LinkedData Planet Conference and Expo, which will be held in New York City on June 17-18, whose keynote speakers include Kingsley Idehen, President and CEO, OpenLink Software Inc., Ian Davis, Chief Technology Officer and Director, Talis Group, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (no introduction needed…), Atanas Kiryakov, Head, Ontotext Lab (Sirma Group) , and Dr. Anant Jhingran, VP and CTO, Information Management Division, IBM. The aim of the conference is similar to that of SemTech, to provide industry professionals and technologists with new views and applications for organizational data processing and business problems, such as trend analysis, decision support systems, social networking, and supply chain relationship management.  http://www.semantic-conference.com http://www.linkeddataplanet.com 

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It seems to me that what was once referred to as the Internet is becoming an interlinked structure connected by means of concepts.

I have been thinking about this since Tim Berners Lee published his blog post on 21 November, coining a new phrase for the Web: “Giant Global Graph” (Given that he is the inventor of the World Wide Web, posting this phrase on his blog will undoubtedly lead to him being credited as the creator of the “GGG” phrase as well). I cannot say that I disagree with Berners-Lee’s conceptualisation of the Internet as a GGG. In his blog post, he states that the Internet connected computers, the Web connected documents, and that the Graph connects content.

At its most basic, the Graph is constructed of connected concepts which can be viewed as possibly infinite. File formats, structures, and representation languages used no longer place boundaries on the transfer of information, as they once did before the advent of the Semantic Web. Concepts transcend the restrictions of formats and represent relationships.

However, one question comes to my mind. What is the meaning of the word “Graph”? The The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1996) defines it as:

graph XIX. orig. (chem.) short for GRAPHIC formula, in which lines are used to indicate the connections of elements; hence in math.

To me, this is relatively acceptable definition for the English word “graph”. But, the word graph is just a term for a connected structure. What about the millions of people who do not speak English? Will they also adopt the English term “Giant Global Graph”? Or, what I consider more likely, will they simply have a conceptual image of what is in English termed the “Graph” as a connected structure of concepts? And thus label this structure with the most appropriate (or already existing) term from their own language? In this case, I am referring to those people in the Semantic Web community and other interrelated communities who are aware of the emergence of the “Giant Global Graph”. The point I am making is that the “Graph” is not so much a specific term, but a conceptual structure which has been created (and is being improved) by Semantic Web technologies. It represents an almost infinite number of concepts from nature and humankind, and the relationships between the concepts. This is also what an ontology intends to capture. Which brings the description of an ontology closer to the original philosophical definition of an ontology: the science of being.

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The 3rd Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress, hosted by World Congress http://www.worldcongress.com/, a Massachusetts based organisation which promotes best practices in healthcare, was concluded in Washington yesterday. The morning keynote speech and the final keynote speech were presented by Adam Bosworth and Tim Berners-Lee respectively. The relevance of the Semantic Web was once again brought to the forefront as Berners-Lee highlighted the development of Semantic Web technologies in the Life Sciences, in particular applications for healthcare. Security of data in healthcare was also discussed, among other topics, such as net neutrality.

http://www.worldcongress.com/events/HT07010/index.cfm?confCode=HT07010

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