Originally Written: Sunday, December 11, 2011
The Semantic Web is an amazing technology for working with the enormous amount of data surrounding us. A formal, technical, or mathematical definition of the Semantic Web can be challenging for many to grasp.
Let’s consider how humans understand any word, or what the actual semantics or meaning of a word entails. For example, if someone says, “Joe is a student,” upon hearing the word “student,” our brain creates a virtual image or association in our mind. This might include concepts like: reading, studying, subjects, courses, institutions, student names, exam results, and so on. Through these associations, we understand what the word “student” signifies. This mechanism implies that information related to the word “student” is already known to us—it’s already associated or linked within our minds as a network of concepts. This is how human comprehension works.
If we can create these same associations for a machine, then the machine can begin to “understand” the word “student” in a similar way to us. Formally, this concept is a core part of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Every day, a vast amount of data is added to the web. Indeed, the modern web is often referred to as the “Data Web.”
We can further explain this associativity using a simple “FAMILY RELATIONSHIP” example: A father is related to his son, daughter, and wife. Similarly, other family members are also related to all other members within the same family. Just as we instinctively understand these connections, the Semantic Web aims to create similar explicit connections between pieces of data, allowing machines to “understand” their relationships.
