Connecting the dots: Networking CRM & The Next Web; Foto: Mangaia Milky Way by Tunc Tezel

The Semantic Web is an expression that began with a technical meaning.

Most people define the Semantic Web as a web that is able to describe things in a way that computers can understand. Other people refer to it simply as the definition of a… web of data. In any kind of explanation though, The Semantic Web is part of Web 3.0 and Web 4.0, because it will be able to analyze all the data on the web: links, content, transactions between people, computers, mobile devices. This dream not yet come true (of all people who understand that our ability to create content will eventually make us sink in it) means, basically, that we will need to find a way to make our computers work seamlessly with huge amounts of information, and then sort & understand it in such a way that it will become available to us at the blink of an eye.

Instead of us searching for words and expressions on Google and then trying to make sense of the resulting hundreds of pages, in the Web 3.0 and 4.0 Semantic Web age, the online software shell surrounding us in all mobile devices will be able to find out instantly what we desire and then feed that information or data to us. Basically, it looks like in the next web, people will become some kind of end user, because all the processes of searching, accessing and transforming data into knowledge will be done by machines…

And at the rate we generate content, it’s becoming more and more clear that unless we will be able to integrate semantic technologies in the internet, it will simply become unusable. In order to avoid this, we have to find a way to make a machine in China decode the word bank sent by a machine in the US as a financial institution, and not as one side of a river. And in order to do this, instead of trying to make the machines think like people, we might as well describe the world in terms that machines are good at thinking in.

At this moment, the Internet is filled with specific data items that are somehow linked together. You have people, articles, books, songs, spreadsheets, bank accounts, whatever. The big breakthrough of the Semantic Web is that these links between specific data items will actually mean something. By all accounts, in the future day in age, these links will actually become relationships (people like this book, hate this article, listen to this song, work on this particular spreadsheet and use this bank account). In the end, enough relationships create a context and the context will be the most important thing in understanding the meaning of things and, in fact, the meaning of the internet of things.

In this context, when everything, everywhere will always be connected, it’s only logical to think that CRM Systems will need a powerful networking module to function properly. And if everything will be connected over the internet somehow, then it only stands to reason to think that people will need to be connected in powerful networks in order to succeed. And even though some people might be scared of the future, from a certain point of view it looks like it all comes back to the basics. People will become the product of their own environment (choices, things, devices and, most importantly, other people) in a way that will define their whole existence. The phrase “tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are” will be all the more actual, since networking will most likely become the support for all activities, business or pleasure.

Photo: NASA