Future of the Internet: Semantic Web vs Web 2.0

If you understand what Semantic Web and Web 2.0 means, skip to the dotted line.

To those of you who do not follow the advancements of the internet, I shall try to give you a ‘The Future of The Internet’ 101 in one paragraph (if only all classes are like this :S). To begin with, the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 are two candidates that are deemed to be the future of the Internet.

The simplest way to understand Semantic Web is to appreciate that at current standards, computers do not understand the meaning of words, it is not unlike a non Japanese speaking person reading Japanese text. If you were to Google ‘cool shops in KL’, the search engine will search for matching texts without understanding that the ‘cool’ does not refer to the temperature but is in fact a colloquial term. Web 2.0 is the term given to the ongoing transition of the Internet to a more collaborative environment where user input enables better data services; such as wikis, social networking sites and blogs.

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There is a certain perception that the future of the Internet must be either one of the two. This however, is a misconception as even by definition, the scope of study that the two affects are two very different things. If anything, the future of the Internet would more likely be the amalgamation of the two.

If these two are the shortlisted candidates to be the future of the internet, an interesting question would be when and how the change would take place. My personal take on the matter is that there must be a certain business demand for its change and with classic demand-supply models, a change will surely take place. As to who would be powerful enough to have such an impact to this business demand, other than private web owners (who individually shall provide and propagate Web 2.0 interests), mega corporations such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, whose services and standards are adhered to by some many, can hasten this change by prompting for a this new Semantic Web/Web 2.0 compliance.

On another note, Semantic Web’s use of ontology faces standardization issues. One important issue to point out are the tags that ontology uses – imagine if HTML wasn’t standardize and tags could be customized, person A could label ‘cool’ as ‘temperature’ while person B could label it as ‘weather’ and ultimately semantic search engine will still not be able to differentiate the two or detect its similarities. Ultimately I do believe a body must be made to standardize the specifications of Semantic Web before its widespread use can be propagated (this is not unlike the case for Bluetooth as a standard).

An interesting thought would be if collaboration and the enabling of computer interpretation are the next step of the Internet, what would be the next step after that?