Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Why Semantics?

I was asked once by a friend of mine as what is Semantics? I gave a very short explanation as what I am trying to achieve. But then the flow of question started as:
- Why we need such a thing?
- Why we need semantics?
- Are current technology not good enough?
- Is this going to be just another jargon?

To understand this lets go back to where we started. We refers to human beings. Going few hundred yrs back in time if we look back at where we were. Human beings were living in a closed society, We were not interacting with other culture, countries much like we do today. Only few peoples were able to travel to different places meet different people etc.

The same thing happened to computers as well. When the first computer was invented it was mere a device to perform calculation. Over a period of time it was transformed into a Stand-Alone system. Then came network, followed by internet and world-wide-web. This changed the way computers work, they interact, they collaborate.

Today Human beings are traveling to different places, interacting with different cultures, learning / adapting different environments. We are able to communicate with other cultures, peoples without any boundary or restriction. In a nutshell human intelligence has increased.

Then the question which we need to ask here is what does computers do? They perform our day-to-day tasks. They perform tasks on our behalf.

So for them to keep doing what they were designed for (i.e. performing tasks on behalf of human being), their intelligence level has to be increased. This is not an option anymore. It has to be done otherwise computers will not be able to meet their primary objectives.

The human intelligence has increased, computers intelligence has to be increased. Computer need to understand the human way of interpreting the data, understanding the data. Unless we put this sort of intelligence in computes they will not be able to perform the job on our behalf.

Linking back to one of my earlier post about Semantics, Its the study that relates to signs of things in this world. This is the way we human beings operate. If we make the computers understand the way we do, they can definitely perform the kind of tasks we do.

At the end in my opinion, Semantics is not just another buzzword. It is the way the computers are going to understand the things in future. It is more to do with philosophy than the computer science itself.

Until Next Time...:)

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