Posted December 1st, 2007, in: Semantic Web| Technology

I wanted to get this idea down before I forget and also get it out so that I can get help from you with it.

The Semantic Web is all about middleman-like programming-terminologies that help different pools of information to be processed more efficiently. Taxonomies for domains of meaning.

This doesn’t mean that information necessarily will work together. It just means that if/when it is time to build software to do something with some information, additional layers of translation are less likely to be needed.

We work with databases (or at least compilations of structured data) all the time. The contacts in your cell phone, and the list of calls in your landline handsets’ caller ID history, for instance, are both basically databases. If both sets of data happen to be stored in the same way, using the same or similar terminology, it doesn’t automatically mean that your Cell will be talking to your Landline or that either will be talking to the Phone Company.*

Additional infrastructure is required in order to take advantage of two sets of data. An application is still required. And in the case above, a network and/or platform on which the Application will run is needed first also.

The fact that information is stored in an intelligent way doesn’t mean that the information is automatically available, just like how you can’t edit this post and I can, despite the fact that what you’re looking at and what I’m looking at are both just HTML and Javascript pages coming from the same server, using the same simple MySQL database.

I wanted to write something like this because of the people I talk to that seem to think that Semantic Web technology is inherently a path toward less privacy. This post needs work. I hate to post something that isn’t finished, but I need help finishing it.

Any thoughts on these ideas?

*How do you know they aren’t already?