Archive for the 'Web' Category

The Semantic web and life sciences

I see where Tim Berners-Lee expects the next explosion in use of the Semantic web to be in the field of life sciences.

The Semantic Web “will give scientists and other users unexpected help and serendipitous added value from others’ data,” Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), said at the Fourth Annual Bio-IT World Conference and Expo in Boston

He went on to say

Life scientists in particular could find the Semantic Web a useful tool, and in so doing, “provide leadership to lots of other fields” in implementing this next-generation Web technology, Berners-Lee said. “At the moment, I see a huge amount of energy from people in life sciences, getting excited by the Semantic Web and what it can do to solve the big-idea problems.”

Dr. John Breslin, of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at NUI Galway has written and spoken extensively about the semantic web so I look forward to finding out from him first-hand just exactly what the semantic web is when he comes to the Blogging for Business event on the 9th of June.

If you find the concept of the semantic web hard to understand (I know I do), you are not alone - even Tim Berners-Lee admits that the concept is “quite difficult to explain.”