The Emergence Of Web 3.0 Part 1: Introduction To Semantic Web

Introduction

This article explains the significance of the semantic web to Web 3.0 and is the first part of many. I'll dig deep into the realm of semantic data representation and querying tools that will help you understand it better and build applications around it. The term itself has been around since the 1980s but the goal for which it was intended has been too ambitious, if done the right way - it will change the world for good!

Let's start from the beginning...

Web 1.0

The first generation of the web referred to as Web 1.0 was built to access files and textual content through a browser. In 1989, a computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee, known as the founder of the world wide web not only developed the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) but also paved the way for HTTP protocol as well. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) addressed how the files will be accessed through a browser. The idea of a semantic web was envisioned at this stage but was dropped due to some hardware restrictions and complexities around it. The world wide web grew in popularity once the popular browser Netscape Navigator was introduced in 1993, which was followed by our favorite browser Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari.

Web 2.0

The problem with Web 1.0 was that it wasn't interactive, it represented static websites with just content and there existed room to grow. The term Semantic Web was coined yet again by Berners-Lee in collaboration with Tim O'Reilly in 2001 in an article at that stage but it was realized that the Web 2.0 version which supports user interactivity is of more importance.

By 1999, the term Web 2.0 came into existence and was adopted by 2004, the second generation of the web now presented the opportunity for marketing capabilities, user-personalized blogs, social media platforms, and SaaS (Software as a service) products.

We all know what happened next, we're living it!

Web 3.0

Web 3.0 is still being developed, it is proposed to be smarter, decentralized, and would comprise all of the world's data within a semantic web. The banks will become irrelevant as digital currencies will be adopted, and trade would not consist of intermediaries or middle agents anymore giving users complete authority over their information and providing them with utmost transparency.

We're not there yet! But that's a hell of an ambition, we're talking about disrupting the whole world and the status quo around it ??

Web 3.0 would put a strong emphasis on decentralized applications adopting blockchain as a technology front, along with that to make the web smarter, it would use machine learning, natural language processing, and the semantic web to navigate with a lot more than just keywords.

Web 2.0 let many big giants collect user information and monetize it in a way that let them grow tremendously but with Web 3.0, a global peer-to-peer network along with blockchain ledgers, it becomes impossible to hoard and alter data or transactions.

Imagine a world, where you can buy directly from a brand without a need for PayPal, Apple Pay, Wise, or even banking applications acting as intermediaries. As a customer, you will have access to a blockchain ledger which will be the same as the one that can be referenced by a particular brand or organization. This provides more democratic applications that would not only flourish businesses but also the economy itself.

The question remains, where does the semantic web fit in all of this?

The Semantic Web

The essence of the semantic web is to make data interpretable by machines and humans, this can lead to automating a lot of tasks and processes. The purpose of the semantic web is to serve the meaning and relationship of the data with other entities.

The data is stored within a graph comprising of a triplet format i.e. <subject> <predicate> <object>. An example of the aforementioned format can be as follows, "<Awais> <HasProfession> <Software Engineer>", this dictates how the subject is associated with an object. The following example further clarifies how the semantic web can be represented visually:

The above diagram shows a problem set in the form of linked data or linked open data, which refers to a set of data that is interlinked with multiple entities. Within the above figure, the entities range from individuals to where they live and the organizations they work at.

The Linked Data Principles

In 2006, Berners-Lee provided a set of four properties that linked data entities can possess

1. HTTP URI should be adopted for naming entities on the semantic web
2. HTTP URI to be can also be used by humans for a lookup, where they can find relevant information.
3. When a lookup is performed, information is served in a standard RDF (Resource Description Framework)
4. Include links to other URI, so more related entities can be discovered.

There are alot of terms here!! ?? Let's talk about them in order to understand the four points above

Resource Description Framework

The RDF is a form of graph descriptor or a vocabulary, you can label your data in a triplet format (as discussed above) by using a particular set of namespace literals. RDF statements can be incorporated into?HTML webpages or stored in separate files and linked to data in web content. These are primarily represented within XML format, here's an example:

The?<rdf:Description>?element contains the description of the resource identified by the?rdf:about?attribute. The elements:?<cd:artist>, <cd:country>, <cd:company>,?etc. are properties of the resource.

Web 3.0 proposes to have a global data graph that will comprise multiple such interlinked data graphs. Imagine just like HTTP links acts as an address for a particular webpage, in a similar fashion it would be represented as an entity for example the link (https://webprotege.stanford.edu/#Person) can represent all attributes associated with a person. Similarly, the above example where rdf:about represents a link, can be used to identify "Empire Burlesque" as a song.

Difference between IRI, URI, URL, & URN

https://webprotege.stanford.edu/#Person - Hmmm Interesting! this seems like a standard HTTP URL, or is it?

Nope, it's a URI, not a URL.

Let's talk about a few terms below before we head into further details:

URL - Unique Resource Locator

URI - Unique Resource Identifier

URN - Unique Resource Name

IRI - Internationalized Resource Identifier

As depicted in the image below, all URLs are URIs, but not all URIs are URLs. A URI is a definitive namespace that can be identified for a particular entity and can exist for a long period of time. This is how we can represent semantic entities through URIs:

Perfect! Now I can access these URIs globally... wait... Hang on a sec! How can the semantic web handle multiple languages?

Well, that's where IRI comes in, which is an internationalized standard. Within URI you can only use ASCII characters but within IRI, you can use all the symbols across the globe, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. Here's how you can differentiate between the two:

URI - https://webprotege.stanford.edu/#Address

IRI - https://webprotege.stanford.edu/R9grk7UfMSgtLHADLVQ80zW

Conclusion

Within this article, we explored the journey from Web 1.0 to 3.0 and talked about formal terms that are used while discussing the semantic web. We learned how the semantic web is built out of multiple URIs or IRIs and how each of them contains the resource description in RDF, which is an XML-based descriptor.

In the next article, we will learn about other resource descriptors like RDFS and OWL. Moreover, we'll learn to query these resources to return data that is based on multiple interlinked entities.