by Annette
9. May 2007
The time is coming when the web's capabilities will challenge us 'knowledge workers'. I've been recently fascinated by the work of Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web language HTML and the current Director of the World Wide Web Consortium among other posts at places like MIT. In talking about the future of the Web, he talks about the Semantic Web or Web 3.0 technologies. Two new languages, in particular RDF and Web Ontology Language (OWL), will allow more intuitive and synthetic use of information on the web. The web will be able to access databases, spreadsheets and provide more specific and generative functionality.
While these innovations are a number of years away, it still provides us with a distant early warning that we need to concentrate on 1) building a deep knowledge of expertise and 2) developing our creative capabilties. We may not see the advent of artificial intelligence, but if we see only a portion of that come to pass, we'll need to focus on what makes us uniquely human to stay relevant. We'll need to skim off the top the things that make us artists in the human enterprise and build these skills with intensity and passion.
