Book Note: Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web

My kids often accuse me of over analogizing, but sometimes the analogy is just staring you in the face. I was reading this book on the Semantic Web this morning while in my mechanic's waiting area. When I got to the section on Resource Description Framework (RDF) allowing software agents to automatically explore websites to solve all types of sophisticated queries, I thought to myself "this will never happen." At that moment I looked up and saw the mechanic sitting in my car's driver's seat reading the owner's manual. How did he know where to find it? It was in the glove compartment, of course, where everyone keeps it. How did he know there would be an owner's manual? All cars come with one. The hope of Semantic Web supporters is that it will emerge in the same way, through a gradual growth of standard resources and behaviors. The real question is how long a run? We probably have to think in terms of human lives, not Internet time. The mechanic was probably in his late thirties, and the tradition of user manuals in glove compartments is at least as old as he is, maybe older. When viewed with this time frame, the ideas in this book may actually come to pass. I'll have more to say about the Semantic Web and this book when I'm done reading it.