The picture of innovation in education is messy. Cost reduction is a big thread. But the approaches vary enormously. And we see radical innovation that aims to work outside the current educational establishment as well as more incremental innovation. Effecting change in education is hard and many of these initiatives still look very early stage. But they are an exciting glimpse into the future, the “straws blowing in the winds of change” that you typically see in Act 2 of the Creative Destruction 7 Act Play.

Photo: Steven Parker from Flickr

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(Photo: Siri founders Tom Gruber, Dag Kittlaus, and Adam Cheyer)

Siri’s acquisition by Apple is official. Terms of the deal couldn’t be disclosed by Gary Morgenthaler of Morgenthaler Ventures and Shawn Carolan of Menlo Ventures, co-lead investors in Siri and collaborators with SRI International, the original developer of the core technology platform that was licensed to Siri and spun out in the fall of 2007. Their agreements with Apple stipulate that they can’t talk about the transaction or Apple’s plans for Siri. But they had some other thoughts to share with The SemanticWeb Blog about what the acquisition represents in a larger sense, and what else we may see emerge from the SRI incubator.

“What I can say is that Siri and the excitement about Siri really represents the importance of a much more connected web, a much more information-based web, and the emergence of knowledge – metadata — around what the content is that’s on the web,” says Morgenthaler. “Siri embodies that, and the excitement around Siri as an independent company and potential acquisition candidate is a recognition of that.”

With approximately a quarter million downloads to its credit so far, Siri’s tapped into what the semantic web should be about – making it easier to find what you need on the Web and do what you have to. “They’ve taken a lot of the complexities of the semantic web and hidden them behind an amazingly simplified user interface for users to easily get things done,” he says. “A person downloading it from the app store is not worried about RDF or ontologies but about bookinga taxi. That is the beauty of a great consumer product.”

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In 1987, Apple produced a concept video demonstrating a future computer called the Knowledge Navigator. The tablet-like device offered the user a natural language interface, video conferencing, multi-touch display and access to a global network of information…
 

According to Robert Scoble who got it from tracking FTC, Apple is buying Siri. (This has yet to be confirmed by Siri or Apple). The front story is mobile, specifically a bruising battle between Apple and Google. But once again the back story is semantic technology. Siri is not some cute iPhone app banged together in a garage over a Red Bull fueled long weekend. Siri has hard core semantic tech that originated from Darpa (just like that little system called the Internet).

Like the Facebook OpenGraph story, this is another example of semantic web going mainstream. The Open Graph front story was all about social media, but the back story was their adoption of RDFa. That has been a big boost to the semantic web community.

Siri looks like a good exit for investors and will give them confidence to invest more in companies that use semantic web technology. These ventures may be positioned as social, mobile or real time but we see semantic web as the key to that golden triangle.

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