Spinning a new web - Cover story

If you can remember life before the web, you’ll wonder how we managed to find the information which now lies at our fingertips. Yet a point of view suggests the web, as we know it, really isn’t up to the job. The argument is that web pages are designed for people – and you could be forgiven for wondering what the problem is with that. The response is that web pages aren’t designed to be read by ‘machines’ and if they were, then we’d find the information we’re looking for – and related information – more readily. Proponents of this viewpoint are developing a vision called the Semantic Web. This shouldn’t be confused with Web 2.0, which is more about social networking, Wikis and RSS feeds. With the Semantic Web, machines will do the hard work, not users. Martin Merry, who leads the Semantic Web research team at HP Labs in Bristol, contends that a lot of the things that we humans use the web for could be performed more readily by programs. “Take booking a flight, for example. You can do that as long as you have eyes and fingers. But, with the Semantic Web, the task can be performed by machines.” So what is the Semantic Web? Ask Merry and, surprisingly, his first definition takes you away from the web. “It’s a way of bringing information together in one place and searching it.”