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The IT revolution sparked by the World Wide Web has been likened to the impact of the printing press in the 15th century. But now a new variety of web is emerging whose impact could be akin to the invention of language itself. That at least is what the cheerleaders for the so-called Semantic Web would have us believe - among them Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British-born inventor of the web.
The web is, in essence, just a vast network of computerised filing cabinets, whose contents we rummage through by guessing keywords and feeding them into search engines. The sheer speed of the search process has helped hide its failings.
And chief among them is the fact that computers can do far more than merely store stuff. Given information in the right format, they can actually comprehend its meaning.
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The World Wide Web looks pedestrian compared with a new internet resource, says robert matthews |
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The Semantic Web would link all these computers together, creating a global network that actually understands what you're trying to do. Want to know about, say, the role of reparations in the emergence of Nazism? The Semantic Web will find all the relevant documents and combine them into a coherent thesis.
The trick lies in putting the original information in the right format and making it retrievable. It's a humungous challenge but Berners-Lee has now declared that the basic framework is in place.
So are history essay nightmares about to become, well, history? Not just yet: far fewer than 1 per cent of all web-based documents are in the right format, and it will take a collective effort of will to change that.
Plus Swoogle - the Semantic Web's version of Google - is a swine to use. But one day it could make AJP Taylors of us all. 
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 17, 2006
 Last week: can the Zune beat the iPod? |
