The Semantic Web Revisited

• DOI: 10.1109/mis.2006.62
• Publication Date: 2006-05-01
• Authors: Nigel Shadbolt; Tim Berners-Lee; Wendy Hall
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 302; 02 engineering and technology

The article included many scenarios in which intelligent agents and bots undertook tasks on behalf of their human or corporate owners. Of course, shopbots and auction bots abound on the Web, but these are essentially handcrafted for particular tasks: they have little ability to interact with heterogeneous data and information types. Because we haven't yet delivered large-scale, agent-based mediation, some commentators argue that the semantic Web has failed to deliver. We argue that agents can only flourish when standards are well established and that the Web standards for expressing shared meaning have progressed steadily over the past five years.