In many ways all the standards efforts profiled in this chapter can be seen as providing a foundation for the next jump-shift in the Knowledge Economy, enabled by enhanced Internet capabilities, in which far more can be done to exploit past and future knowledge. In terms of key technology developments, there are three large-scale R&D efforts underway: the Semantic Web, the Grid and Internet2.

The Semantic Web

Tim Berners-Lee provided the original vision and follow-through to invent the Web as we know it. Together with other members of the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), he is also providing the vision for extending it to new capability (Berners-Lee, Tim, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila. Scientific American, 2001).

Known as the Semantic Web, this extended capability will deliver better access to richer content, as well as mechanisms to extend automation and ensure trust. The term “semantic” is used to indicate the importance assigning contextual meaning to information to enable effective knowledge exchange.

The Semantic Web will rely upon encoded meaning in its information structures and the relationships between information. The key technology supporting this initiative is the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a "language" specifically designed to support the sharing of metadata and information enriched by it. The widespread implementation of RDF will therefore facilitate the growth of new value chains in both information and knowledge.

The Semantic Web Improves Productivity of People and Networks. Why is this important? Most of the uses of intelligent agents and knowledge searching described in the vignettes in Chapter 2 are enabled by the Semantic Web. This can make knowledge workers far more productive than today. Consider the following extension of one of our vignettes:

“Conrad Elliott wishes to enrich a seminar he is giving next week on applications of ambient technology to professional association meetings.