We’ve known about the Dublin Core (www.dublincore.org ) pretty much forever. We know it has a following in Library Science, and content management systems, and Adobe uses their tags as the basis for the XMP (www.adobe.com/products/xmp/). And we knew that at least one of the original architects for the Dublin Core, Eric Miller (www.w3.org/People/EM/ ) is now deeply invested in the Semantic Web.

The news yesterday that Microsoft is likely buying semantic search provider Powerset had those of us in the community buzzing.  Besides the valuation per se this event provides several thoughts about the maturity of our technology, its value and its future. 

What will Google do now?  This is the first question that comes to mind.  They are on record as saying they “explore all technologies that can provide users a better experience”.  But they also say that it is unlikely users can ever be re-trained to type out full sentences in the form of questions as Powerset requires you to do. 

Yahoo! has entered the Semantic Web with the announcement of RDF support in SearchMonkey . And leave it to a semantic web veteran like Peter Mika to be the one to make it happen.

SearchMonkey has become the inspiration for my latest cocktail-party answer to the question, “What is the Semantic Web?” (yes, I seem to spend a lot of time at cocktail parties. Well, in bars, anyway). A cocktail party answer has to be understandable and even engaging to someone who has already had two (or more!) drinks (not to mention comprehensible after I’ve had two or more drinks!).

You know something is up when RDF and the Semantic Web are mentioned on TechCrunch . That’s not one of the ‘new company raises $6m to enable Semantic Web search, but is never heard of again’ kind of mentions. It’s a simple, straightforward, ‘Yahoo! is now starting to index the metadata embedded in our web-pages, and the web is bound to follow’ kind of mentions.

What is commonly understood about the Semantic Web is not what I care to write about. I have a long professional history of looking to the future of business and how things come together in unique and challenging ways. In other words how stuff turns out that most people did not anticipate and thus did not factor into their decision making – sometimes with terrible consequences. This is no doubt true also with the Semantic Web.

The problem of business-IT alignment is of widespread economic concern, and is largely caused by a semantic disconnect between business people and technologists. The business people speak English, and the techies have to translate that English into something a computer can understand — often a low-level, step-by-step way to complete a task. The margin for error is great. The situation is a bit like the childhood game called Telephone — by the time the message gets to the last person, it has changed dramatically from the original. The problem is made worse by the fact that the business requirements often change during a project.