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London: How will the internet look in five years' time? Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the world wide web, envisages an internet in which all information, applications and data are seamlessly linked and interwoven - everything will work with everything else and that will, in effect, allow us to live our lives almost entirely online.
Technology experts call this the "semantic web". At the moment, search engines place more emphasis on the links and connections between websites, rather than on analysing the specific information contained within them.
The semantic web, by contrast, will focus on the meaning of data on a page. Computers will "understand" the context of information and will be able to identify and appreciate the complex links between people, places and data, pulling it together to deliver rich search results and a better online experience.
"The semantic web is not a separate web but an extension of the current one," said Berners-Lee. "Information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation."
However, as technology commentator Paul Miller points out, moving towards a semantic web does not mean ripping up the internet and starting again. "Not everything about the semantic web has to be paradigm shifting and revolutionary," he said. "Many of the benefits will simply come as existing systems become more open and as existing data moves a little more freely and purposefully."
Last week Yahoo! announced that it would be building principles of the semantic web into its search engine and adopting some of the key "standards" when indexing information on the internet.
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