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Topics
• What are semantic technologies?• Why now?• What capabilities make semantic
technologies different?• Where is the market going?• Role of upper ontology
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What are Semantic Technologies?
A shift in paradigm, technology & economics
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Semantic Technologies:Representing meanings & knowledge about things so both computers and
people can work with it
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So, what do semantic technologies do?
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Semantic technologies model knowledge about infrastructure, information, behavior,
& domain expertise separately from programs and data…
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Knowledge Plane:Semantic technologies affect all layers
of the IT stack
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Semantic Bandwidth:More metadata, semantic modeling &
knowledge representation, more reasoning capability
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Semantic Capabilities:Meet challenges of development,
infrastructure, information, knowledge, and behavior
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Why now? Need to solve problems of scale,
complexity, function, performance, and agility…
SCALE CHANGE CHANGE MANAGEMENTMANAGEMENT
COMPLEXITY
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Why now?Need to improve economics and reduce risks across all stages of the solution
lifecycle
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Why now?Issues of national significance demand
solution
Examples:• Scientific method for in silico
research• Semantic interoperability of
systems and information• Multi-lingual computing
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Where are we headed?Value gains from two-fold to more than
100 times
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Conclusion
• Where we are — Today, semantic technology is a tiny fraction of the $1.2T ITC market. Information technologies, stack architecture, and procedural algorithmic programming paradigms dominate.
• Where we’re going — Near-to-mid-term, look for rapid uptake of semantic web and related open standards to solve system plumbing and information interoperability problems. Focus is net-centric infrastructure, knowledge work automation, subject ontologies, and social networks. Still issues of scale and complexity.
• Where we’re really going — Over the next decade, towards universal knowledge technology, executable domain knowledge, & systems that know and learn.
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THANK YOU