Using RDF and RDFS Data Formats

Abstract

As I mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, I believe that a key technology for Web 3.0 will be the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web concept, which was originally introduced in a Scientific American paper¹, embodies the idea that web applications can provide useful data to both human readers and software agents. The publication of Semantic Web content along with the development of related tools has been and continues to be a slow process. Here’s an analogy: one fax machine is useless; you need a critical mass of installed fax machines before you get the “network-effect” benefit. The same thing holds for the Semantic Web: tools get written as more content is published in software-readable forms, and more content is produced as more tools get written.

Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila, “The Semantic Web,” http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web, May 2001.