In my view the most important that humans mostly comunicate on semantic level – ie exchange knowledge and not in program code – procedural. A new form of expression for this needs to be found and systems will follow from this. Semantic web arises from the recognition that we need to move to this level. I believe that the current forms of expression are completely not adequate to express the depth of knowledge that is required – so the real thing is some way of. But it must come and we can call it “age of enlightement” for the web.

I do worry as well that our language will change faster and faster, now that the neologistas are networked.

I liked Stephen Fry’s observation recently that the abbreviation for ‘world wide web’ has three times as many syllables as the unabbreviated phrase. It’s funny to hear people pronounce an abbreviation that may have been one of the first created for its ease of typing, rather than speaking.

Anyway, I don’t care whether we define ‘the semantic web’ as the next ‘wave’, or whether we even ever find ourselves needing a pithy way of saying ‘web services with semantics’, all I care about is that the data we have scattered across the services on the web (just look at your honour roll of feeds) becomes more interoperable and gets easier for software agents to read and understand (subject to the usual provisos – I believe that the ultimate control of personal data should be in the persons hands).

As long as semantic technologies increase, I don’t much care whether they increase like a tsunami wave in open water (tremendous power, but little to notice), or a tsunami wave hitting the coast.