Summary

I can't say whether or when the Semantic Web will arrive. I believe that if it does arrive it will appear to have come about all of a sudden (as in the performing arts, sports, and politics, "overnight success" takes on average 10 years to achieve). We will be scrambling around trying to make our sites, interfaces, and applications "semantic" so we won't get left out of this brave new world.

In this chapter we reviewed the key enabling technologies of the Semantic Web and worked through several examples that show the strengths and some of the limitations of this technology as it has been implemented to date. In particular we outlined a moderately complex example, because most practitioners would do well to move beyond the toy applications that are used for demonstrations and begin to explore how this will work when it starts to scale to real applications.

Rather than wait for the last minute, as we did with the Internet (where there were many winners and losers once the dust had settled), I suggest that we begin adopting these technologies now, at a measured pace. The technology works. You don't have to wait for it to reach critical mass to use it. You can use it internally, experiment with it, and learn its capabilities. In doing so you will learn much more about your current systems, improve them, and be ready for the next wave as a bonus.

Speaking of getting ready, Chapter 15 is about what to do next.