Barbara Starr of Search Engine Land reports, “In a June 2010 Semantic Web Meetup in San Diego, Peter Mika of Yahoo!’s research division gave a presentation entitled, ‘The future face of Search is Semantic for Facebook, Google and Yahoo!’ As the title suggests, the presentation focused on the ever-growing use of semantic markup as a means for helping computers parse and understand content. The talk focused on what was then the current state of the Semantic Web, as well as upcoming formats/technologies in development and the research being done in the field of semantic search.” Read more

Aron Kramer of The Guardian recently predicted long-term changes to the world that will occur in 2013. He writes, “A healthy dose of scepticism is in order whenever one attempts to foresee the future. Events usually make great sense in retrospect, but are difficult to predict at the time. The daily hum of headlines, breaking news and Twitterfeeds may distract us from the underlying changes taking place. With this in mind, the best way to think about 2013 is to consider the long-term changes that are reshaping our world – some with visible effect, and some under the radar.” Read more

Borris Evelson of the Forrester Research blog recently shared Forrester’s prediction for business intelligence advances in 2013 and beyond. Evelson writes, “BI-specific DBMSes will gain popularity. Alternative database management system (DBMS) engines architected specifically for agile BI will emerge as one of the key fundamental agile BI technologies that BI pros should closely evaluate and consider. These specialized, BI-specific DBMS databases — those that are designed specifically for BI reporting and analysis — currently have lower adoption rates when compared with their bigger, older, more versatile, jack-of-all-trades RDBMS cousins. But don’t expect these low adoption rates to continue; BI-specific DBMSes started to become mainstream in 2012 and the trend will continue in 2013. Forrester expects that more than 20% of all BI applications will be based on this technology within the next two years.” Read more

Marjorie Teresa R. Perez of the Business Mirror recently questioned what data will look like in 2013. She writes, “There are many, many people who talk about this issue. For instance, Director, Market Insight and Strategy at Amdocs Michal Harris—who is awesome, by the way—says that we’re going to see a move away from service providers just worrying about the operational challenge of managing data to operators beginning to realize the business opportunity that big data brings. And if you look at the trends toward data and video traffic, you can see that the number of people enjoying LTE coverage is going to skyrocket in the next couple of years. Unlike the Web today, the semantic Web won’t just reside within computers, laptops and mobile devices. Instead, it will be part of electronics like refrigerators, cars and televisions.” Read more

Jamillah Knowles of The Next Web recently explained why 2013 will be the year of the Internet of Things. Knowles writes, “This year’s Le Web event in Paris was based around the theme of the Internet of Things (IoT); the way in which objects around us will gather data and connect to controls or other machines via the Internet… There are still issues that need to be bashed out of course, proprietary technologies and closed data systems don’t do much to help things along. Privacy, security and networks are also in need of further consideration. However, products like the Fitbit or Fuelband are already becoming commonplace and makers are experimenting with remote systems like Lockitron for front doors and Growerbot for watering house plants.” Read more

Nick Barnes of Climate Code recently shared his vision for the future of Web Science. He writes, “The culture and practice of science is undergoing a revolution, driven by technological change. While most scientists are excited by the shifts and the opportunities they present, some are uneasy about the pace of change, and unclear about the destination: where is science going, and how will it help their own research. In this post, I will lay out my vision of twenty-first century science: the shape of future scientific practice, and in particular the future of scientific computation and data-processing.” Read more

Doc Sheldon of Search Engine Watch reports, “Tim Berners-Lee first spoke of a Semantic Web at his address at the first World Wide Web Conference in 1994. Given the technical level of the audience, his presentation was, for the most part, met with excited nods. The Web Berners-Lee described was a far cry from the library-style repository of the Web at that time, but the concept wasn’t so far-fetched, at least to the listeners with a more visionary nature. ‘Semantic’, however, is a qualifier that means a great deal in this context. It demands that a machine, or more accurately, the software that drives that machine, must understand the information in the way it was intended. Let’s face it: most of us know a handful of human beings that are challenged in that regard.” Read more

Alex Williams of TechCrunch reports, “Big data will drive $232 billion in spending through 2016. It will directly or indirectly drive $96 billion of worldwide IT spending in 2012, and is forecast to drive $120 billion of IT spending in 2013. Gartner Research published the results today. They draw several conclusions from their research: (1) Big data is not a distinct market. More so, data is everywhere, impacting business in any imaginable way. Its influx will force a change in products, practices and solutions. The change is so rapid that companies may have to retire early existing solutions that are not up to par. (2) In 2012, ‘IT spending driven by big data functional demands will total $28 billion.’ Most of that will go toward adapting existing solutions to new demands driven by machine data, social data and the unpredictable velocity that comes with it.” Read more

Gil Press of Forbes recently interviewed Jim Kaskade, CEO of InfoChimps regarding Big Data and his predictions for the market. Press writes, “Jim Kaskade’s crystal ball shared with him recently a list of upcoming big data acquisitions: EMC will buy MapR, Oracle will buy Cloudera, and Teradata will buy Hortonworks. Kaskade, the newly-appointed CEO of Infochimps, believes CIOs are ready to embrace open source big data software and that the established IT players, lacking open source experience, will have to buy their way into the market.” Read more

Prag Khanna of the New America Foundation has written a fascinating article regarding the future of humans and technology. Khanna writes, “One 26-year-old says more than half his memories come from his online life. A Japanese man marries a voluptuous digital avatar. A corporate laboratory implants memories in 7-year-olds, convincing them they swam with dolphins. In their minds, they even got wet. Even for our greatest philosopher of the surreal, Sigmund Freud, reality remained rooted in the personal and social. A century on, however, technology is granting us the ability to alter our perception of reality, construct multiple representations of ourselves like avatars, and have relationships with artificial agents like robots. All of these are simultaneously expanding and destabilizing our sense of self.” Read more