The Concept of the Semantic Web

The Web is a Web of Data . It is the future of the Web, an ongoing project that depends on the work of all of us who believe in the power of the Web not just as a tool, but as a platform that can unleash human knowledge like never before.

The goal behind the development of the Semantic Web is to evolve our current web, transforming it into a large, global, interconnected database that is easily understandable by both humans and computers.

In this new scenario, it will be possible to conduct research regardless of the type, format, and source of the data, and the result will be found.

And the result will be rich due to the acquisition of semantically interrelated data, generating information far beyond the current list of websites, which are disconnected from each other.

Watch the video below featuring Tim Berners-Lee at TED Talks before we continue, here on this page .

Tim Berners-Lee explains The Web of Semantic Data.

The history of the Semantic Web

The history of the Semantic Web is intertwined with the history of the Web itself. The founders of the "world wide web" are practically the same ones who defined and answered the question:

What is the Semantic Web ?

It was when Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila published an article in Scientific American in 2001, titled " The Semantic Web – A new form content Web was born .

Learn more about the History of the Web and find out who Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila are.

From the initial concept of the web (a network of computers serving documents hosted in a database) to its current stage—that is, a network of integrated content that generates information—a long road has been traveled. Many brilliant professionals have contributed their work so that I am here writing and you are reading me.

Previously, when we wanted something, we had to do a keyword search

Nowadays, this scenario changes rapidly, every moment!

Far beyond a document website

This new web, born from the work of the community of developers, content creators, scientists, and others, will be the result of this collective work. The new web will be a Web of Data, where online will be interpreted, and from their connection we will derive meaning and coherence.

In short, the semantic web is an extension of the World Wide Web that allows humans to work with each other and with computers in a state of complete cooperation.

By linking documents through their meanings, by assigning significance to their content, we are creating the future environment for the acquisition and sharing of all human information on Earth. A virtually infinite source of knowledge creation.

This is my vision for the future, which is shared by thousands of other professionals who deal with semantics and the construction of content and projects for this new Web.

Whether it's creating a layer of content published on the Internet that is understandable by both humans and computers, or programming and developing languages ​​that enable this human-machine communication, everyone can be part of this movement.

The Future of the Web is Semantic

This new web is called the Semantic Web because of the meaning that markup brings to the content available on the internet.

Pierre Lévy foresees two major challenges on the path to transforming the web into a semantic system:

The first is the lack of qualified professionals to work in organizing the information;

The second is the need to adopt a standard for the so-called "semantic web"—which will allow all knowledge to be automatically coordinated by concepts, and no longer by links between documents.

How we solve these problems is part of the success, or failure, of the Semantic Web .

In addition to the classic "Web of documents"

Organizations like the W3C – World Wide Web Consortium – are working to build the technology needed to support the " Web of Data ".

I share the W3C when it comes to the Semantic Web:

• The information on the web has a precise meaning.
• Information on the web can be understood and processed by computers.
• Computers can integrate information from the web.

Scientists around the world are currently working to enable computers to perform more useful tasks by creating systems that support reliable network interactions.

But what does Semantic Web mean?

The term "Semantic Web" also refers to the W3C's vision of the Web of linked data.

The Semantic Web expands the Web, through the use of structured data, so that computers understand the content of your website as well as humans do.

Alex Rodrigues

Semantic Web technologies allow people to create data stores on the Web, create vocabularies, and write rules for data processing.

The linked data is enabled by technologies such as RDF , SPARQL , OWL , and SKOS .

"This would mean the end of the fragmentation of the information network, currently divided due to language barriers and diverse choices of organizational systems" – Pierre Lévy

But what is the Semantic Web today?

Things might be a little confusing for you, and you might be wondering what this thing called the Semantic Web really is.

Perhaps the most intelligible definition is that of Berners-Lee , in the 2001 article:

"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current network in which information is given a well-defined meaning."

We, who are working on building this new, more semantic web, have a clear understanding of the meaning of the words above when we see the Semantic Tower of the Web:

The Semantic Web stack

To create this in the web phase, layers and layers of metadata, logic, and security are needed to make it the basic building blocks of semantics.

In the visual representation above, we have the layers that surround a stack, a tower of blocks, representing the entire process.

This stack changes and evolves as the concepts that form the Semantic Web develop.

The basic building blocks of semantics

In the article, Tim goes on to explain what the "layers" of this tower are:

The basic building blocks, consisting of Unicode and URIs, go all the way to XML , and then to more sophisticated layers such as ontological vocabularies and RDF .

Much work still needs to be done!

If you've already understood what we're talking about, you've grasped how things work. But if you're expecting all of this to be available to your company, you need to take it slow.

Much work still needs to be done, despite the rapid development of the Semantic Web. Many of the technologies that comprise it need to be better defined and developed. Technologies such as RDF , RDF Schema , Ontologies, and Integration Systems need to be worked on for some time before they are 100% ready.

But if the Semantic Web hasn't taken off yet, what can be done to move it from plans to action?

The first problem: people want to participate.

Let's return to the definition of Semantic Web:

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web that will allow computers and people to work together to give meaning to information.

The simple fact that the Semantic Web is an extension of the current network (which is also still being built) creates a problem for us: the computational part evolves well, but people need to be ready to work together.

For you and me (and the rest of the users ), it matters little whether the RDF correctly specifies the data, or whether the XML is well-constructed; we want to use all the capabilities of this new web now. We finally want to use the computers we created to their fullest potential.

The second problem: standards are for machines.

Each time a technical standard reaches the maturity necessary to advance the Semantic Web, we get closer to the ultimate goal, but this only serves to make semantics increasingly sophisticated.

The technical aspect will continue to evolve, bringing the Semantic Web to the level we need.

But they are for machines, they were programmed to run on systems that don't communicate with each other, and that's why it's so urgent to create a "semantic layer" or "universal semantic language" that acts as an intermediary between data and people.

The third problem: human-machine integration.

Adapting technologies to people's needs is the third problem to be solved. The connection between these two seemingly separate worlds—people and computers—needs to be made.

We need to mature the technologies involved in the Semantic Web. Once we complete this step, the absurd amount of data we generate every day will truly be available to the people who need it.

The fourth problem: dealing with the mess of the Web of Data.

In the article, “ Dealing with the messiness of the web of data ” by Stefan Schlobach and Craig A. Knoblock¹, I found a fourth and complex problem. They explain:

Semantic Web research, now in its second decade, has been successful in encouraging people to publish data on the Web in structured, linked, and standardized ways. The success of what has now become the Web of Data Linked Open Data , Linked Life Data initiatives .

However, this increase in data renders many established assumptions inadequate and presents a number of new research challenges.

In stark contrast to early Semantic Web applications that dealt with small ontologies and hand-crafted datasets, the new Web of Data comes with a plethora of contradictory worldviews and contains incomplete, inconsistent, incorrect, mutable, and opinionated information.

This information does not only come from academic sources and reputable institutions, but is often created, copied, or translated by the community.

In short, the data is messy and difficult to use. This special edition is dedicated to that messiness and how to deal with it. The approaches in this document can be broadly classified into two classes: first, to provide guidelines or best practices for avoiding the messiness in the first place, and second, to give users an infrastructure and techniques for building useful applications despite the mess.

The Future of the Semantic Web

To organize the information available today, we rely on artificial intelligence (and other new technologies), and in this way, new techniques will be used to give meaning to the content distributed across the internet.

But for the web to reach the level of maturity we need, it's not just about it being able to connect content. Those who work creating content need to have the willingness and technical knowledge to use technologies such as RDF, SPARQL, OWL , and SKOS.

The Semantic Web is a network of linked data.

Imagine these technologies as windows to the content your company has been creating (or will create) for years, content that is currently sitting idle and inaccessible on your website or in a database on company computers, but which could be used by people all over the world to generate information.

Vocabularies for organizing data

This work of organizing data is extremely important. Using OWL (to build vocabularies or "ontologies") and SKOS (to create knowledge organization systems), it is possible to enrich data by adding new meanings. This allows more people (and more machines) to do more with the available data.

Consulting information from all over the world!

Query languages ​​are data's best friends.

We previously saw that the Semantic Web is a Web of Data. Therefore, to access all this data, we need to create a language that queries and searches these databases for information.

SPARQL is the query language of the Semantic Web.

NLP and Semantic Web-based model for Information Retrieval

In this live stream, part of a series on Artificial Intelligence and the Semantic Web, Sueliton Ribeiro (Senior Specialist Leader at CI&T) and the Bots team , Caio, present the results of their doctoral thesis, " COMPUTATIONAL MODEL FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL FOR DIGITAL REPOSITORIES USING ONTOLOGIES ." I would like you to watch their presentation to see how the use of Semantic Web tools in conjunction with Ontologies, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning can shape the future of the Semantic Web.

How can a semantic web help your company?

What could micro and small businesses do to participate in this evolution of the Web?

Let's look at the work that the W3C has been doing with different industries.

Working with companies in healthcare, humanities and life sciences, e-government, and energy to improve collaboration, research and development, and the adoption of innovation and the Semantic Web.

For example, by assisting in decision-making in clinical research, Semantic Web technologies will connect many forms of biological and medical information across institutions.

Now think about this: does your company generate data? All the time, right? Just look at the number of spreadsheets on your computer.

But what kind of information does this data generate for you, for the companies you work with, and for the market you operate in?

Did you know that the data your company needs to start an excellent SEO campaign is stored on your computer?

What is the Semantic Web?

Learn more about Semantic SEO and the Semantic Web.

Yes! That's exactly what I said: the enormous amount of data that every company generates daily is the beginning of a process we call Semantic SEO.

In this process, we create a vocabulary for your business, with the important themes for your market, and we create content (based on data) so that today's intelligent search engines understand that your website is relevant enough to appear in search results.

SEO and the Semantic Web

Much has changed since the invention of the Web and since Tim Berners-Lee developed the foundations of the Semantic Web. The web has gone from a handful of websites to millions of platforms and billions of pages. Before, access was limited to a privileged few, who were in universities or in homes that could afford to buy a computer.

Today, in most places, many people have access to a (nearly) unrestricted network, with pages, platforms, and systems of all kinds. All of this is tracked, ranked, classified, and displayed by modern search , based on powerful algorithms whose programmers aren't even sure how they work.

How do you optimize a website for a semantic web?

There is both a challenge and an opportunity in the semantic web for website owners. The challenge is to create content that goes beyond separate texts on web pages and blog posts. What needs to be done is to think about the market in which the site operates, the entities that are part of this domain (field of knowledge), and create content around it.

But what exactly is this entity?

Well, it's simple: these are the basic themes of your market. Let's look at an example?

My market is SEO, and within that domain, website optimization, we have:

• Search Engine;
• Website development;
• On-page SEO
• Link Building;
• Content Marketing;
• Search Engine;
• AEO;
• Algorithms;
• and much more…

These are the entities, specific, basic themes of a market (adapting a basic concept from the Semantic Web), that we always use but that need to be explained and defined for our audience, which is often unfamiliar with the subject.

So, this is the strategy we call Semantic SEO!

The Semantic Web, as I've already said, is a web of meaning. The documents that are on the web today are beginning to be tracked, ranked, classified, and displayed in ways that were not possible before.

The rich snippets below are a sample of what can be done when a search engine understands your content:

What you need to do is have a website with well-written code, pages planned and developed according to Semantic SEO strategies, and create content that explains and connects the entities in your market.

But that's a whole other topic, and you can read all about SEO here on our blog!

A suggestion for advanced reading

Web 2.0 and Semantic Web

by Vladan Devedžić, Dragan Gaševic

Web 2.0 describes the trend in web technology and design that aims to increase creativity, information sharing, and, most importantly, collaboration among users.

The Semantic Web refers to the intelligent interaction between systems and applications on the Web, implementing ontologies, semantic annotations of web content, and reasoning.

Its ultimate goal is to make data understandable to computers, thereby opening it up to much greater utility and manipulation.

Edited by two Springer authors, this special edition of AoIS will present cutting-edge research on these often opposing trends in computing and support the discussion of the synergies and controversies inherent in the two technologies, while also considering what other technologies might contribute to both.

Dramatic advances in service-oriented architectures, model-driven engineering, and web mining technologies are just some of the developments that could have a considerable impact on Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web, and all of them will be covered in this volume.

This is important material for anyone researching web data and mining technologies, web-based application development, applied AI, or service-oriented architectures.

• Publisher: Springer US
• Language: English
• Web 2.0 & Semantic Web
• Author: Vladan Devedžić, Dragan Gaševic
• Published by Springer US
• ISBN: 978-1-4419-1218-3

Table of Contents:

• TagFusion: A System for Integration and Leveraging of Collaborative Tagurns
• Semantic Enhancement of Social Tagging Systems
• Adaptation and Recommendation Techniques to Improve the Quality of Annotations and the Relevance of Resources in Knowledge Bases
• Semantic Document Model to Enhance Data and Knowledge Interoperability
• Ontology-Based Data Mining in Digital Libraries
• An Assessment System on the Semantic Web

To buy:

eBook | Physical Book

¹Berners-Lee, Tim &amn”>p; Hendler, James & Lassila, Ora. (2001). The Semantic Web: A New Form of Web Content That is Meaningful to Computers Will Unleash a Revolution of New Possibilities. ScientificAmerican.com.

¹ S. Schlobach, CA Knoblock, Dealing with the messiness of the web of data, Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web (2012), doi:10.1016/j.websem.2012.05.001

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