Semantic Search

ReadWriteWeb today with a post on what semantic search is (not):

Organized information is not semantic information.

'Semantic Search' may or may not be the way with which we relate to information on the Web in the future.

Are you ready to talk with your students about a deconstruction web? The underlying existing arche-Web that no one yet knows how to tap into?

Because we use language within the Web, the information bound up within it is full of nuance and what could be referred to as hermeneutic and allusory data -- that is data comprised of interpretations and references with a context separate from the data itself.

There's a simple way to think about this. Consider that in any broadcast of a football game, you've got a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator. The play-by-play announcer gives a direct account of the action on the field and the color commentator brings in the interpretations and references to history, anecdotes, and personal stories. Now, using only a transcript of the color commentary, could you reconstruct the game play-by-play?

That mind-bender is sort of the issue at hand with semantic search.