James Hendler recently discussed what the arrival of Watson at RPI will mean  for the growing technology. He writes, “The Watson program is already a breakthrough technology in AI. For many years it had been largely assumed that for a computer to go beyond search and really be able to perform complex human language tasks it needed to do one of two things: either it would “understand” the texts using some kind of deep ‘knowledge representation,’ or it would have a complex statistical model based on millions of texts.” Read more

Friend of SemanticWeb.com Dr. James Hendler recently shared his perspective on the arrival of Watson at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: “Every single student in the Department of Computer Science here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has the potential to revolutionize computing. But with the arrival of Watson at Rensselaer, they’re even better positioned to do so. Watson has caused the researchers in my field of artificial intelligence (AI) to rethink some of our basic assumptions. Watson’s cognitive computing is a breakthrough technology, and it’s really amazing to be here at Rensselaer, where we will be the first university to get our hands on this amazing system.” Read more

RPI reports that Jim Hendler has been honored for his contributions to Open Data. The article states, “Jim Hendler, head of the Department of Computer Science and senior constellation professor in the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer, has been honored with an inaugural Strata Data Innovation Award, given to individuals who have made significant innovations in the data field. The award, given as part of the O’Reilly Strata Conference taking place this week in New York City, was created to ‘recognize disruptive, innovative technologies in big data and data science, highlight data science as an increasing importance for companies, and showcase the highlights of the growing data community,’ according to the conference website.” Read more

A million data sets. That’s the number of government data sets out there on the web that we have closed in on.

“The question is, when you have that many, how do you search for them, find them, coordinate activity between governments, bring in NGOs,” says James A. Hendler, Tetherless World Senior Constellation Professor, Department of Computer Science and Cognitive Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a principal investigator of its Linking Open Government Data project lives, as well as Internet web expert for data.gov, He also is connected with many other governments’ open data projects. “Semantic web tools organize and link the metadata about these things, making them searchable, explorable and extensible.”

To be more specific, Hendler at SemTech a couple of weeks ago said there are 851,000 open government data sets across 153 catalogues from 30-something countries, with the three biggest representatives, in terms of numbers, at the moment being the U.S., the U.K, and France. Last week, the one million threshold was crossed.

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The business side of the Semantic Tech and Business Conference was on display at the closing session today. Panelists shared their own takeaways, pointers, advice, observations and predictions about a number of semantic web issues about bringing semantic technology to the enterprise.

The panelists included  Craig D Hanson, Director, Innovation and Architecture Amdocs.; James Hendler, Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Arnaud Le Hors, software standards architect at IBM; Dave McComb, President, Semantic Arts Inc; Marie Wallace
Social Analytics Strategist, IBM; Joe Devon, web developer and consultant; Christine Connors, Principal TriviumRLG LLC; and David Booth, an independent contractor and senior software architect at PanGenX.

Here’s an overview of what they had to say to – and for — the enterprise community:

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James Hendler was recently interviewed regarding the state of the World Wide Web and advances in semantic technology. Asked about the proliferation of the web, Hendler commented, “The Web is changing very fast and it has a very rapid effect on our economy. Consider something like aeroplanes which, as a subject, has been studied all along. On the contrary, the Web has happened so fast and hit so many places that we never really had time to understand it. Many of the periodical works on the Web are being done on the data collected in 1999. In 1999 Facebook didn’t exist. Twitter didn’t exist. A lot of people study Twitter. But again that is just one thing. Wikipedia has been successful, while most ‘wikis’ have failed. Online, we are now discovering the power of the (individual’s) voice and governments do not know how to deal with it.” Read more

Ten years (and change) since the publication of The Semantic Web article in Scientific American, co-author Jim Hendler says he is “very, very happy and optimistic about the state of semantic technologies and the Semantic Web.”

And, he notes, government has been an exciting partner in its progress.

Hendler, professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, home of the Tetherless World Constellation, will provide evidence of that in his presentation at the upcoming Semantic Tech & Business Conference in Washington D.C. this month. TWC works on opening and linking government data using Semantic Web technologies, and Hendler also freely provides his expertise to the U.S. data.gov project, through which he’s in contact with many other governments’ open data projects. Those attending Hendler’s keynote at the conference will get a look at TWC’s new International Open Government Dataset Search (IOGDS) app based on metadata extracted from some 400,000 government datasets on catalog websites. These were converted to RDF Linked Data and then republished via TWC’s LOGD SPARQL endpoint. “That proves we can use metadata to help people find the right data when there is so much available,” Hender says, and yield better visualizations of it, too.

Some 25 countries currently are represented, inclusive of datasets from the U.S., U.K., Singapore, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Kenya, and China. “What’s exciting to me is we see this happening all around the world,” Hendler says. “The extent to which the ecosystem is forming around this area is really surprising.” TWC features a few dozen demos here, which provide some insight into how much of a game-changer it is for government to couple open and Linked Data, providingthe ability to do things more quickly and in a more web-friendly way, and at lower costs. Hendler points to TWC’s creating infographic visualizations from several government datasets in hours, not months, and at a cost of pennies, not tens of thousands of dollars.

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With a panel of leaders from the semantic technology industry, this session will give us the opportunity to reflect on the many discussions that have taken place during the week of SemTech 2008 and help us map the course as we prepare to extend those conversations back into our workplaces. We will touch on issues of ROI, making the case for semantic technologies in the enterprise, and what to expect in the coming year in the semantic tech space.

Note: This podcast is "Premium content", and requires Semantic Universe registration, which is free.

Attachment: Final Panel – Bringing SemTech Back to the Business.mp3 (49.7 MB)

Presenters:

Dave McComb
Semantic Arts
Dave is President of Semantic Arts, and author of “Semantics in Business Systems.” He has 30 years of experience applying leading edge technologies to enterprise level applications.

John Gilman
Blue Shield of California

Dir. Architecture and Engineering

Christine Connors

Stephen Hall
Vulcan Capital

Managing Director

Jeffrey T. Pollock

James Hendler
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Jim Hendler is the Tetherless World Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Assistant Dean for IT. Jim is former Director of the Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery and co-director of the Maryland Information and Network Dynamics (MIND) Laboratory at the University of Maryland, and is widely recognized as one of the earliest visionaries of the Semantic Web.

Ivan Herman
World Wide Web Consortium
See http://www.ivan-herman.net

Jonathan Mack
Guardian Life

Senior Technical Architect