Search for the Semantic Web: The Google Flaw

On March 12, Technology Times Online published an article about Tim Berners-Lee and his belief in the coming of the semantic web.

You may wonder what a man does after creating the internet and the world wide web. I'd always imagined Berners-Lee with a ZZ Top beard in a top secret underground bunker surrounded by other scientists. Perhaps I'd confused him with Richard Stallman.

Berners-Lee is actually the senior researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is convinced that the web as we know it will soon fade away.

GOOGLE NEVER LEARNED TO READ
Ok, so that isn't true. Google's search engine can read, it just can't contextualize. As exhibited by W3C a simple search for SOAP yields an XML protocol, soap operas, the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology, and the 1977 Golden Globe award winning series featuring Billy Crystal. Google, you idiot! We've had a relationship since you were born and yet you continue to produce sub-par search results. Don't listen to what I type, listen to what I mean.

THE SEMANTIC WEB AGENT
In 1999, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers...when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

The W3C Working group asks users to imagine a semantic web agent producing the correct search results, cross-referencing those results with colleagues' work, sending the prompts to request info from colleagues, clearing schedules to set aside research time and presenting the user with a list of links to related subject matter.

Essentially, the semantic web promises to be relevant and engaging, providing insight into who we are the choices we make.

It's bloody Saturday morning. A truly intelligent agent would have sent me a tylenol and a Jugo Juice by now.

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Search for the Semantic Web: The Google Flaw

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