What Happened to the Semantic Web?

Remember the Semantic Web? Probably not. It was all the rage about two decades ago. But nowadays, mentions of it are rare. After starting with a bold vision for a new Web (see below), the Semantic Web gradually lost steam and faded into the background little by little. Still, there never was a kind of “reckoning” about why it was so… until now that the Semantic Web vision has to consider the presence of the disruptive and flashy Generative AI technology. In this post, I examine why the Semantic Web, despite losing its initial shine, is an essential piece of the Web puzzle, even coexisting with the new Generative AI, and why Data Science professionals should be aware of it too. But first, let’s take a look at the man behind the creation of the Semantic Web. <h1>The Man Behind the Web</h1> Sir <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Tim Berners-Lee</a> (TimBL) proposed the concept of the Semantic Web (SW) in 1999 while he was working at the <a href="https://www.w3.org/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)</a>. The idea was to create a web of data that machines could process, allowing them to understand the meaning of the information and make connections between different pieces of data. We must understand that the SW was a second act for Tim Berners-Lee. In 1999 he was already a worldwide (no pun intended) celebrity as the creator of the World Wide Web long ago. <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/what-happened-to-the-semantic-web-cbaaf547a09f">Read More</a>