Internet 2 / W3C - Semantic web

Glad to know there are grown ups in charge of all this web mess!

I've read / heard about Tim ('scuse me, Sir Timothy) Berners-Lee for years and it was a real treat / privilege to hear him speak. And I really appreciated his simplification/clarification of the term 'semantic web' as data links: that was / is something I can begin to understand. The examples he offered didn't hurt either. A valuable 20 minutes or so.

He also articulated the larger, global picture in which 80% of the world's population has no connection to the web. The ensuing discussion of how 80% of the world's population did have access to cell phones and how those cell phones could be the 'on ramp' (that was Steve Lohr, NY Times, interviewer's term, not Berners-Lee's) to the web.

This was in the context of the newly established WWW Foundation that is going to try to make sure that the further development of the web is focused on serving all humanity, not just those who already have access to it.

Internet 2 is impressive along the same lines: an organization devoted to guiding web development in a direction that will be beneficial to all. I was fascinated by their work with 'dark fiber' (optical fiber that is currently not being used). Also I was impressed by their idea of a parallel internet where new ideas, improvements, etc can be tested before being rolled out into the plain, vanilla web we know and love.

Understandably, neither organization offers memberships to individuals. But that doesn't mean we / I shouldn't track their activity because combined they pretty much represent the future of the web.