Risks and Benefits of the Semantic Web
An innovative and emerging Internet programming framework, the Semantic Web describes a system where information on the Web is categorized by labels that can be read by computers. At time of publication, most websites contain information such as text and images that can only be read and interpreted by human users, yet the Semantic Web aims to include tags with information that include the date of last update, the size of the content or a category theme that would enable a computer algorithm to interpret and sort the information. Like any such profound change in information architecture, however, Semantic Web programming involves a series of risks and opportunities.
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Benefit: Informed Cumputers for Web Services
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With current Web configurations, human intervention and interpretation is still necessary to complete most transactions. One of the potential opportunities with Web content that is understandable to computers is the possibility that computers themselves could complete certain simple transactions. If an e-commerce site included semantic labels allowing computers to understand the information, for example, a computer could complete a purchase when given a detailed prompt like "buy a book about jaguars for under thirty dollars". Depending on the amount of semantic information available, the process could even include computer instructions to find well-reviewed products or products from a specific manufacturer.
Benefit: Harnessing Organizational Power of Computers
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Although computers do not yet have the analytic abilities of a human, computers are much more able to process huge amounts of information very quickly. Given the huge and growing amount of content on the Internet, another potential benefit to semantic tags on the Internet would be improved organizations tools such as search engines. Most current search engines rely on combinations of keyword searches and user data generated by traffic and linking, yet a semantic search engine would be able able to read content labels placed on all websites, avoiding returns of irrelevant content that just happens to use a relevant keyword or gets a lot of traffic from users looking for similar information. In theory, a semantic search would yield more accurate results based on descriptors introduced by the content creators.
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Risk: Finding Common Language
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One of the great benefits to Semantic Web organization would be the ability of computers to access sites and information regardless of differences in content languages. Before that happens, however, the programmers that put semantic tags in have to come to an agreement on how the framework would work, what aspects of the content it would describe and what computer language or tagging system it would use to do so. As with all new programming frameworks, compatibility and standardization are major concerns in Semantic Web programming, with a risk of inaccessible or lost content whenever a creator deviates from the established standard.
Risk: Proof and Trust
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Unlike computers that simply complete tasks, the human mind is capable of understanding the system in which it is acting. Just as content creators and marketers currently manipulate the current keyword system to increase Web traffic, savvy programmers could manipulate semantic tags and provide false information to attract more users. In an automatic organizational system where human readers capable of detecting these misleading tags would have little input, this threat is particularly concerning. As a result, Semantic Web developers that identify this factor as a major risk have proposed a number of systems such as electronic signatures and human verification strategies to reduce malicious manipulation.
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References
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