Published scoops

One reason that the Internet exploded in the late 1990s was that it was possible for a reasonably intelligent person to learn HTML coding or to use Web editors to create new and original websites. What I've read about the Semantic Web is confusing at best to a person who is not a computer programmer. Is the language too technical to ever become common place for amateur website creators to master and use? What is the incentive for them to incorporate Semantics in the structure of their websites?

In 2001, Tim Berners Lee, Ora Lassila, and James Hendler unveiled their vision of the Semantic Web in an article in Scientific American, writing, “ The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.” Six years later, we have several languages to implement the Semantic Web, Semantic site likes Twine, and Semantic technology is being embraced by some of the largest corporate players in the field. But there is still a long road to travel.

For better or worse, the wiki represents the current state-of-the-art of the "collaborative web" to most people in business, education, and elsewhere. Yet it seems that they are ill-suited to that purpose. Within the framework of current or near-future technologies, how do you see our interface to the "collaborative web" improving over what we have now?

There are several AI experts on the panel. When most Americans think of Artificial Intelligence, they think of lifelike robots and talking computers al a the Jetsons or Hal. But Novak Spivack once said, "By 2050 no synthetic computer nor machine intelligence will have become truly self-aware.” Does the rest of the panelists agree? And if we don’t have our own C-3PO, what will the “robots” of the future actually do? How does AI fit into the future of the World Wide Web?

Social networks like MySpace & Facebook have activity feeds of all the network interactions in a users social graph, coupled with photos from sites like Flickr, videos from sites like YouTube and the morass of data from sites like Twitter....

Aggregating all of this creates so much "noise" that the user is overhwhelmed. Their mailboxes and feed aggregators are currently not able to provide a semantic filter on all of this data....

The title of the Rensselaer constellation, “Tetherless World,” speaks to an important barrier that the Web is facing to becoming truly universal. We may easily get the Internet on our Mac, but what about our car? In an era when technology is increasingly tetherless with technologies like the iPhone in the pockets and purses of many around the globe, how do we build a Web that can reach us wherever we are?

Senior vice president of Intel, Patrick Gelsinger, has been quoted as saying that the Internet is “running up on some architectural limitations" and will begin to collapse as millions of new computer users from developing nations begin to sign on. Do any of the panelists believe that we can essentially destroy the World Wide Web? What about the ways that we currently use the Web could be harmful to its long-term sustainability?

Just wondering how the panel sees this battle playing out in the near term for the US market. Looks like Apple improved its "3-G" connectivity and dropped its prices, but Nokia seems to attract the open-source coders. Thank you for taking my question.

A York University (Toronto) professor was sitting at his desk at work in March 2008 trying to reach an internet website located somewhere in Europe. It was important to his research so when he repeatedly could not reach the site he contacted his IT department at the University. They were mystified why this would be the case. The Professor went home after work and found that he could reach the website from home consistently for many days and was not ever able to reach the website from the University campus network.

There are many things we take for granted today, but our day-to-day life hangs on these things by a delicate thread. Things such as a transportation network, fuel, and electricity. The web is increasingly becoming one of these essential things that may halt our lives if it becomes unavailable... it is developing into another vulnerability that we humans face.