JISC

The Semantic - or ‘intelligent’ - Web, the mobile web and the issue of ‘net neutrality’ – the idea that there should be a single and freely available Web to all – are the main themes to emerge from a major conference on the future of the Web held in Edinburgh this week.

Speaking in an interview for JISC at the end of the week-long International World Wide Web conference, David De Roure, Professor at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton and one of the conference organisers, said it would be remembered for the emergence of the Semantic Web from specialist and academic discussions into the mainstream of public debate.

‘The Semantic Web came through at all levels of debate,’ he said. ‘It’s become very real.’ Acknowledging that the Web community has not in the past been very good at articulating what the Semantic Web actually is, Professor De Roure says that some very good and concise definitions are beginning to emerge. ‘The Semantic Web is the web of data,’ he suggests. ‘Data is what’s in databases. Imagine that data and those databases linked up on the web. People are used to spreadsheets. Imagine therefore that you could pull in data from spreadsheets anywhere. The Semantic Web is about the integration of data, enabling data to come together - the data could be calendars, photographs, pictures, scientific data, experimental data - allowing it to be searched and browsed in ways in which it couldn’t be searched and browsed before, enabling those resources to come together, enabling you to ask questions that you couldn’t ask before.’

There are important implications for learning and teaching, he continues.

‘The Semantic Web has equal application in chemistry, history, archaeology, music, and any other subject, and it’s as useful for those putting together the learning materials as it is for those doing the learning.’

Echoing Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, who spoke to the conference at its opening session, Professor De Roure said that the collaborative opportunities opened up by the Web – through the use of blogs and wikis, for example – meant that the web had become a medium in which people now participated.

‘People are now part of the Web,‘ he said. ‘This has become profoundly important. The original conception of the Web made readers first class citizens in that if you were a reader you could become an author too. What you see now is much more participation. It’s giving everyone first class status. That’s as it should be.  But there are risks involved, of course,’ he warns. ‘There are questions of trust. But these are questions that come up in other areas of life too. It’s interesting and important that some of the themes that have emerged from this conference have been suggestions for solutions. The Semantic Web, for example, gives us a way of looking at the provenance of information. Part of the activity of the World Wide Web Consortium – the Web’s governing body - is the creation of a rules language which gives us a way of expressing in a machine-processible way various policies which will also help with these issues. There are a raft of possible technologies, many looked at this week, which present possible solutions.’

If the Semantic Web has been the phrase on everyone’s lips during the week, what else will the Edinburgh conference be remembered for?

‘It’s the conference when we got everyone together,‘ says David de Roure, ‘when we could first say that the mobile web – the Web that’s all around you, that doesn’t have to be accessed through your PC or your browser – is growing, and it’s the conference when we started a debate on the question of net neutrality, about getting people to free their data. That all adds up, I think, to a very successful conference.’

For further information on the conference, please go to: WWW2006 conference