Web 3.0 in 14 minutes

The "semantic web" is upon us, whether we were watching or not. According to Tim Berner-Lee,  the inventor of the world wide web, "data is our lives", and what we are witnessing is a web that aggregates the flow of data, and the relationships between data sets, in ways we cannot yet understand. Information is now far too abundant to integrate within the confines of our own heads, and the Internet facilitates the aggregation of these vast information stores.

This 14 minute video is one of the miracles of our sea of abundance. Arguably the greatest minds currently the probing the edge of the knowledge frontier, describing Web 3.0 and the possible implications. The cynics are just as creditable. And it is freely shared with all of us. Amazing.


Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Phrases and ideas that jumped out at me:

• the semantic web as an expression of information
• semantics is extra information (organizational code) that helps you build meaning from that information
• links between people, items, locations, ideas all mean something and contribute to build context, and context is where meaning resides
• "Does the world make sense, or do we make sense of the world?"
• the first step is evolution, the second step is revolution - are we at the edge of informational revolution, and is this of form of evolution we are witnessing?
• "That will be cool. That often is the future."

Information is a changeable sea. This is a great time to be a librarian. This is a crucial time to be a school librarian. Our students need to be informed participants in this evolutionary/revolutionary phase. This is our unique responsibility and privilege.

Cheers, colleagues!

Source:
Mashable - The Semantic Web: What it is and why it matters

A New Twist on the ole' Magic 8 Ball

We have Google, Cha Cha, Wikipedia and a gazillion other sites to help us find information. What about those tougher life/relationship questions? Now we have hunch, a "decision-making site that gets smarter the more its used." Called "machine learning", it gathers information about the user's personality and preferences to generate customized decisions. hunch is "like a friend getting to know someone's taste and preferences over time, so they can provide sound and trusted advice."

What kind of car should I buy? Where should I go on vacation? Should I really go to my 30th high school reunion? The Magic 8 Ball is designed for yes/no questions, with 20 standard answers. It has worked very well for me over the years, so I am going to run both applications side by side for awhile ;)

The hunch team says "Mostly we're a bunch of MIT nerds with backgrounds in computer science and math, which comes in pretty handy when you're building a massive collective knowledge project based on machine learning."

Caterina Fake, the genius behind Flickr, launched this start up on June 11th. It will be fun to watch and see if it takes off.

When I asked the Magic 8 Ball about attending my 30th reunion it said "cannot predict now". I wonder what hunch will advise?

Some other sources on hunch:
Hunch Launches Monday - But It Already Knows All About You
hunch fact sheet