Creating Semantically Integrated Communities on the World Wide Web

In this paper, we address the question: How can we create a network of semantically integrated communities on the World Wide Web? We first clarify some confusion about what “semantics” means and introduce a semantic continuum ranging from the kind of semantics that exist on the Web today to a rich semantic infrastructure on the Semantic Web of the future. We clarify what is meant by “semantic integration” introducing and defining a “gold standard” whereby two agents that have never met before can successfully exchange information. We acknowledge that this gold standard will only be reachable in limited circumstances, and that a variety of approaches will be needed to achieve successful agent interaction in practical situations on the semantic Web. Towards this end, we introduce several architectures for achieving semantic integration. Each are defined and compared on the basis of how the following questions are answered. Who and when are semantic mappings created between agent ontologies? Is the architecture point to point between each agents, or mediated through another ontology? What is the nature of agreements among the agents? We conclude by making some predictions and recommendations on how the semantic Web will evolve in the coming years.