The World is Built Entirely of "Things" and Metaweb Has Classified Over 12,000,000 of Them.

In perhaps their most serious play towards developing the concept of the Semantic Web, Google announced a few days ago that they were acquiring San Francisco-based Metaweb, as well as Metaweb's free and open database of over 12,000,000 semantically-linked data objects. Now, this is pretty big news, especially if - like me - you're a self-proclaimed disciple of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British engineer / computer scientist / MIT professor / Knight who pretty much invented the World Wide Web and first coined the phrase "Semantic Web". If you're not like me and don't yet have a good grasp on how the Semantic Web will forever change the Internet, the following is a short video clip from the Metaweb.com website to get you up to speed:

Now, why is this acquisition so important to Google? Well, the obvious answer is that it has the potential to significantly improve search, which is Google main profit engine. As the Metaweb video suggests, why waste a user's time with hundreds of search results about hotels, restaurants and events in the City of Boston when the user is actually just a die-hard classic rock fan, looking to create an music playlist for his girlfriend, who just happens to be named Amanda?

In fact, this acquisition has the potential to be more than just an incremental step towards improving search for Google. It has the potential to be huge. Semantic Web is arguably one of the most important evolutions of the World Wide Web since its inception. To be able to associate machine-readable meaning to data on the web, as well as have the ability to define relations between data across the web, is a remarkably powerful concept with almost limitless real-world application. At the same time, however, complete or even partial fulfillment of the Semantic Web vision is probably one of the more technically difficult and logistically complex endeavors that a software company can undertake. It's the Curse of Knowledge, to borrow a phrase from the popular Semantic Web blog site, cited below. The more you know, the more difficult it is for you to communicate knowledge. A full discussion of topics such as ontology, RDF and Owl are well beyond the scope of this article, but you can find an interesting summary of the Curse of Knowledge problem at the SemanticFocus.com website. Incidentally, ontology is where Metaweb's expertise lies.

But Didn't Google Beat Amazon and EBay to the Semantic Web Way Back in 2002?"

In short, I think that the answer is yes - Google did beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web - or at very least they are poised to do so, at long last. You see, for those of you who do not know, "How Google Beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web" is the title of a fictional and, in many ways, eerily prophetic short story, written by Paul Ford way back in 2002. The story details how Google was able to build and leverage the Semantic Web in order to beat Amazon and Ebay - the Juggernauts of the day - to web supremacy and ultimately to achieve virtual world domination. And, although this story was fiction, it was based on real possibilities and insight that was transformative within the World Wide Web community. The story opened people eyes to the potential of a Semantic Web and helped define Google as a player in that field. Now, over eight years later, we're seeing this fictional story play out in real time. Of course, there are some new players now - in particular Facebook, Twitter and other social media competition, as well as some re-emergent giants in Amazon and Yahoo. Facebook, in particular, may even have an edge over the mighty Google in the race to the Semantic Web. Their KISS (Keep it Simple Semantics) model for linking real people with personal data has proved itself to be both powerful and flexible, as well as popular among developers. These principles, combined with the sheer luck of timing, allowed Facebook to essentially corner the "person" market in ways that left Google scrambling to catch up. You don't believe that Facebook can possibly be a competitor to Google? Check out this article by the smart guys at ZDNet.com: Has Facebook won the web war against Google?

But, I diverge. The fact is that there's plenty of room on the Semantic Web for these and many more players in the future. The Semantic Web, in fact, is all about data from different sources learning how to talk to one another and both Google and Facebook will be made stronger by the presence of one another, over the long run. That is the promise of the Semantic Web, in a nutshell.

The Potential Impact of the Semantic Web on Infrastructure Management

Alright folks. It's time for me to bring this concept back home, especially since this is a blog about Advanced Infrastructure and not about the future of the Internet or Google. The main reason that I get excited about any advances in the Semantic Web is because Advanced Infrastructure is essentially ALL about data and knowledge. It is about imagining and designing civil infrastructure systems of the future, which can inherently "understand" that they are parts of larger systems, which may be also made up of smaller components, and which are able to interact and communicate with other complex objects and systems. In fact, in many ways, the basic premise of Advanced Infrastructure can very much be thought of as "Semantic Infrastructure". Think of it as the Facebook, Twitter and Google of infrastructure management. Over here, a power plant is "following" the local weather feed, as well as smart meters from all of their customers, and is optimizing operations based on minute-by-minute fluctuations in temperature and power usage. Over there, a drinking water treatment plant is "friends" with a network of dozens of stream pollutant monitoring stations which are, in turn, "following" the operations of upstream industrial plants that discharge treated effluent to the watercourse. A regulator from the Environmental Protection Agency or a concerned citizen may then "search" these relationships and find all industrial treatment plant violations which led to drinking water contamination over the past year. Taking the concept even one step further, we could then augment these search results with new Semantic data from Google Health or from a feed from the local hospital system, to see how many incidents of actual water-borne illnesses were reported during the time of these violations. In all of these scenarios, the overriding concept here is to get traditional "black box" systems - our electric grids, drinking water and waste water treatment plants, our transportation networks, our environmental sensor nets and maybe even our social networks - all speaking the same language to one another and responding to environmental, societal and system changes more efficiently, more intelligently and more autonomously. In my opinion, such a system would have the potential to virtually displace traditional GIS systems over time. In other words, watch out ESRI.

Last but not least, I have to say that I am optimistic about Google's vision of the Semantic Web, in particular, as it is already starting to intersect the realm of Advanced Infrastructure. Over the past five years or so, I have noticed some very interesting trends that suggest to me that Google may have a major future role, not only in the way we search and view the world, but in how we live and ultimately manage our critical infrastructure systems. Consider, for example, the following three areas where Google is already doing so:

• When Google acquired the satellite image and mapping firm, Keyhole in October 2004 and morphed the project into Google Earth, they fundamentally changed the way the world viewed maps and geospatial data. Google Earth may (at present time) lack the analytic capabilities of more mature GIS systems, such as ESRI's ArcGIS product family. However, Google Earth has arguably succeeded in making geospatial information both fashionable and widely accessible, where all others have failed to do so. Infrastructure management is, of course, very strongly geospatial. As such, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Google Earth has been a disruption technology for the way we think about our global infrastructure systems, as well.
• In October 2009, Google announced that they were developing a philanthropic arm of their business, called Google.org, an initiative which included investments in renewal energy, smart electric grid updates and other measure to reduce greenhouse gases. The most noteworthy of these initiatives was to launch as new software tool, called Google PowerMeter, to allow individual homeowners and businesses to view real-time energy data and patterns.
• Also in 2009, Google announced that the popular cousin to Google Earth, Google Maps, would begin to include information about public transportation and transit systems within the Google Maps environment. Termed Google Transit, this new feature allowed users to get both walking and public transportation directions, after entering start and destination addresses, as well as what time the user would like to arrive at their destination. Once again, because of their ability to take disparate data and combine the information in new ways, Google is able to provide a critical infrastructure-related services - public transit in this case - to the general public.

In summary, Google has already demonstrated the ability to knit the world's information together in order to help us better organize, visualize and address some of our infrastructure management needs, using only present technology. Imagine what Google will be able to do if they can someday harness the power of a fully realized Semantic Web. By combining geospatial and Semantic data - I will repeat the concept, for effect... geospatial combined with Semantic data - Google may very well be on their way to becoming the Googlebot that controls the world, as Paul Ford predicted in 2002. It will be interesting to watch it unfold, to be sure.

And, on a personal and more light-hearted note, if and when Google decides to announce Google Infrastructure as their newest philanthropic initiative, I wanted them to know that I am available to help lead these efforts, either by direct employment or through consulting services. The Google Pittsburgh office is very near to my house, but I would also be willing to relocate if necessary. Cheers!