L&D 2020: Shaping change in learning

Technology

Web trends

The web continues to be a vital part of organisational, personal and educational life as well as society in general at local, regional and global levels. Trends¹ include:

• web participation costs continue to reduce processing, bandwidth, storage and memory are cheap
• expertise barriers to putting content on the web have vanished
• a large "gift economy" means knowledge workers freely contribute via the web e.g. open source development, Wikipedia.

The web has continued to develop a tremendous structure from its millions of cross-linkages Google's pages, for example. Conversely, most intranets still do not have that same kind of cross-linking and have become radically less effective than the external web. Most companies have shifted web-enabled collaborative working externally, rather than rely on a sub-optimal intranet for all but simple use.

Externally, data-processing semantic web² developments are already harnessing and managing vast amounts of online information to help users collaborate and manage data more effectively. The semantic web is an evolution of the world wide web where software agents read and use content.

Imagine being able to find, share and integrate information easily and in a way that reduces the problem of information overload. To achieve this, the semantic web continues to combine design principles and a variety of enabling technologies with a collaborative philosophy.

Semantic web-enabled online services^{3, 4, 5} intelligently help users share and organise information with people they trust. This means users can collaborate globally around common interests, activities and goals. These services assist users by tying together emails, bookmarks, documents, contacts, photos, videos, product information, data records and so on.

Systems underpinning these services understand the meaning of a users information and help them organise it automatically by recognising interests and relationships. In the move to greater collaboration, not just with colleagues, but globally with people never met before, semantic web services help users find and be found by the right individuals.

For better personal organisation, imagine the benefit of being able to annotate information semantically. For example, highlighting the names of people or companies mentioned in an email and grouping them automatically into categories. This approach allows users to explore connections between different documents and see their information organised in a more insightful way.

1. Sloan Review - Future of the Web, Spring 2007

2. http://www.altova.com/semantic_web.html

3. http://www.twine.com/about

4. http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn12903-semantic-website-promises-to-organise-your-life.html New Scientist 11/07

5. http://www.semanticweb.com/article.php/12160_3717146_1 12/07

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