Abstract

A key factor in the success of the Web today is its simplicity and ease of use. This simplicity allows just about anyone to write and publish an HTML page and immediately see the results of their efforts. The next obvious step in the evolution of the web is to bring in semantics to describe the contents. This would allow not just sharing of information, but also support improved searching, extraction, filtering, monitoring, and, most importantly, integration. This has clearly been a goal of the Semantic Web, and while the Semantic Web is a step in this direction and has achieved some success, it has not been embraced the larger Web community.
I believe that the two key reasons that the Semantic Web has not taken the Web by storm are that, unlike the syntactic web, there is a lot more to learn in order to use it and the end users do not immediately see the benefit of their efforts. This is a challenge that needs to be addressed. There are two parts to this challenge. First, how do we make it easy to bring the needed semantics to the information and sources on the Web. Second, how do we provide an immediate benefit to the users such that they see a direct benefit for their efforts.

Date

September 22, 2025

Authors

Craig A Knoblock

Journal

Felix Mata