Semantic Web and the Law

The legality behind web semantics is something that many of us may not think about. Not true for Joel Alleyne:
“One of the things that surprised me when I started working with law firms is that most firms and most tech people ask one question repeatedly that seems to stifle innovation and the development of new concepts and ideas. When presented with something new, most ask: “which other law firm is doing this?’ While this makes some sense and provides a way of weeding out wacky ideas with no traction, it also limits innovation and creativity. What about ideas emanating from other professional service firms? Other service firms? From industry in general?

Take for example the semantic web:

• “… a project that intends to create a universal medium for information exchange by putting documents with computer-processable meaning (semantics) on the World Wide Web”
• “… an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily”

The original vision for this is credited to Sir Tim Berners-Lee as an extension to his original invention (the world wide web). You can find an outline of the concept penned by Tim himself here. Much has been done to establish this framework which is aimed at making web content more accessible and usable — especially by machines.”

Read the full article at Canada’s own Slaw.