[TriLUG] July 9 meeting - The Semantic Web

[Alan Porter]

WHEN: Thursday, July 9th at 7:00pm
WHERE: Red Hat HQ at NCSU Centennial Campus [1]
WHAT: July TriLUG meeting

Please join us as Phillip Rhodes gives us a glimpse
into the future of the internet - the Semantic Web.

The Semantic Web is the name given to Sir Tim
Berners-Lee's vision for the next generation of the
World Wide Web. On today's web, most data is provided
in a format which is easy for humans to understand,
but which computer programs have trouble understanding.
This makes it difficult for us to program computers to
perform useful, time-consuming tasks for us, using data
retrieved over the Web.

As the Semantic Web vision unfolds and more data is
provided in "structured data" form, it will become
increasingly easy to develop programs which can appear
to act much more intelligent in terms of how they
interact with the web and with each other. This will
provide the potential for a huge surge in productivity
as we enable computers to perform lower-value tasks
for us, freeing people to focus on tasks which require
human creativity.

We are still a long way from the kind of "Artificial
Intelligence" that we have seen in science-fiction
programmes and movies, but the Semantic Web moves us
forward in our evolution of adapting technology to
simplify our lives.


[1] DIRECTIONS TO RED HAT:
http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html