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Chapter 2

The development of the Semantic Web is expected to take many years. The first step
in this project is to develop ontologies for specific subjects. Thus far, several areas of
102 scientific inquiry have begun developing ontologies that will become the building blocks of
the Semantic Web in their areas. Biology, genomics, and medicine have all made progress
toward specific ontologies. These fields can benefit greatly from a tool like the Semantic
Web, which can increase the speed with which research results, experimental data, and
new procedures can be made available to all researchers in the field. Thus, these fields
have a high incentive to collaborate on the hard work involved in creating ontologies.
Other sciences, such as climatology, hydrology, and oceanography have similar
incentives (as many researchers around the world work on common problems such as
global warming) and scientists are developing ontologies for their disciplines. The
government of the United Kingdom is also developing an ontology for data it collects with
the hope that it will be useful to a wide range of researchers.
Although many researchers involved in the Semantic Web project have expressed
frustration at its slow progress, a number of users of the Semantic Web have developed
important ontologies that will allow the project to continue moving forward. You can learn
more about the current status of this project by following the Web Links to the W3C
Semantic Web pages.

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