Engineering Webs of Knowledge

Speaker: Nigel Shadbolt

16th March 2004 , 2:30pm , Room 519, Claremont Tower

Abstract

We face a dilemma. The exponential growth of content on the web provides unparalleled opportunities for harnessing knowledge on a massive scale. At the same time we are suffering from a new kind of technological pollution ­ infosmog ­ so much information it is hard to make timely or effective decisions.

The Advanced Knowledge Technologies IRC has the principles aim of getting the right content to the right place, at the right time and in the right form. Content managed in this way is practical knowledge. AKT is about making this vision of knowledge management a reality. It is about understanding why this is hard.

AKT is using the World Wide Web as its principle source of content. Tim Berneers-Lee's vision for a Semantic Web is very close to AKT’s original aspirations. My talk will articulate the assumptions behind the Semantic Web and explain how AKT is attempting to build many of the required components. It will discuss applications under construction and also identify a number of substantial computer science research challenges confronting research in this area.

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Professor Nigel Shadbolt FBCS
Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton