Building a Smarter Internet: Technologies for the Semantic Web

by Ken Orr

Those of us in the technology business tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies and underestimate the long-term impact. Most expectations for new technologies start with the assumption that no matter how significant a new technology may be, its use will simply be set on top of existing technologies and systems that we already have and that things will go on as before -- only better. This notion is well expressed when you think of how automobiles were originally called "horseless carriages."