What did the Semantic Web have to do with the war in Iraq? Not enough, says Jim Hendler, who heads the Mindswap Semantic Web research laboratory at the University of Maryland, speaking at the 2004 Semantic Technologies for e-Government Conference in McLean, Virg., held Sept. 8-9, 2004. 'The beginning of the Iraqi operation was postponed for weeks because information systems couldn't be made interoperable in the time required,' said Hendler. 'Systems couldn't talk to one another.' It was a problem, he says, that a Semantic Web framework could have solved.
Operation Infinite Triples
Hendler's assessment -- that the Semantic Web is the essential glue that will allow large systems to speak to one another, across organizational boundaries -- was shared by many in attendance. A number of agencies and corporations described Semantic Web projects in progress, for client organizations like the Navy, NIST, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Child Support Enforcement, the Office of Homeland Security, and others."
