Seeking Common Threads in Semantic Chaos

by Paola Di Maio

CIOs are warming up to the idea of semantic technologies -- IT artifacts capable of making explicit the meaning contained in the relations among information objects. When properly elicited and structured, relational and semantic technologies can help to expose and maximize a certain degree of "intelligence" that we seek from our systems. While relational capabilities are generally available to structured data stored in databases, semantic capabilities in the open Web can be achieved in a number of ways, using a variety of artifacts. In KM, the capability to capture, represent, expose, and make explicit the thought processes that support users in their professional and sometimes expert functions is central.