My interview by JupiterMedia back in May is below. The original article can be found at http://www.semanticweb.com/article.php/3749916.

The ‘Digital Human’ and the Semantic Web
May 29, 2008
By Jennifer Zaino

No doubt about it, the technology behind the semantic web is truly disruptive. The challenge for companies will be to figure out how to provide applications based on it that match business drivers and meet business goals. Oh, and those applications had better account for the fact that understanding the “digital” human component — within and without organizations — is critical to those ends.

“With a disruptive technology such as the semantic web, there’s a need to really talk about the current state of how we develop semantic technologies and applications,” says Dr. Rachel Yager, director of semantic web company Machintas Inc., which is developing technologies to enable people to better represent themselves in their digital lives. “Not small-scale stuff, but large, enterprise-strength applications.”

In a presentation to be delivered at the LinkedData Planet conference taking place June 17 and 18 in New York, she’ll be doing just that, in a discussion that explores the challenges and approaches for effective semantic systems development. “In the software development lifecycle, what are the best approaches and processes and methodologies that one can use to start looking into semantic applications, and to cater to the evolving technologies in this exciting domain,” Yager says.

Indeed, the semantic web community is vibrant … and at a crossroads in terms of making this disruptive technology viable, says Yager.

“I really think that when we are dealing with the semantic technologies of today, there are some positions that a company can take for the future to better harness the evolving nature of this technology,” she says.

Semantic web technologies can help close the gaps that still exist in IT environments in terms of scalability, flexibility, and agility, and companies can take advantage of that to develop enterprise-class systems that can uncover and exploit the linkages among people, their own understanding of concepts, other data sets, and mass intelligence.

Don’t underestimate how important it is to consider the people part of the link. Human beings and their digital lives are now part of the web fabric, says Yager, and the line between the real and the virtual human is growing increasingly fuzzy. “The human person is part of the link, of the linked data planet — in fact, the most important link,” she says. “We’re in pursuit of flexibility in the name of building agile software for connecting better with people, representing people better in this linked data planet –that is needed.” Human relationships need to be understood to meet business objectives, she says.

For example, a business’ core assets are its employees, and the knowledge that is linked to those people, individually and as part of the collective intelligence, is critical to fulfilling enterprise missions.

“What distinguishes one company from another is the culture and the people and how they make things work,” says Yager. “The representation of people and the understanding of people and linking all that information — we now have a powerful and new way that we can have a richer representation of ourselves in the data on the web. And companies have to care about that, because their employees are going to be part of that.” The same is true about leveraging that understanding on the customer front. “There will be a stage when humans are the content,” Yager says.

Machintas, with its expertise in computational intelligence, is headed in the direction of helping companies understand the human part of the equation, by developing technologies that enable one to represent himself better in his digital life. It aims to bridge the gap between the way a computer and human can think, and to better link the human to the computer. Among the technologies it is working on to achieve these ends is adding a new dimension to semantics, in the area of granular computing. Granular computing, Yager says, is a confluence of technologies, including “fuzzy sets,” that allow someone to represent rich human concepts in a formal way in the computer. That’s a challenge, as concepts such as young and old, rich and poor and even risk, can mean something very different to different people.

LinkedDataPlanet -exploring the new web of connected data – Jupitermedia conference is here in NYC.
I’ll be speaking on – Best Practice in Semantic Systems Development:

This presentation explores the challenges and approaches for effective semantic systems development. We explore the ROI of semantic systems which are primarily based on agility, flexibility, and information quality. While best practices in traditional database-driven systems development life cycle (SDLC) may still be relevant to semantic systems development, there are important differences between them. We elaborate the success factors to consider with examples of different enterprise solutions: ecommerce site, social network analysis, semantic search engine, and risk management. The audience will walk away understanding the critical first steps and on-going management needed to deliver an enterprise semantic system.

See you in NYC!

A week ago, I attended a round-table on the Future of Technology with well-known speakers: Esther Dyson, Jaron Lanier, Bernie Meyerson and Ken Perlin.

The discussion quickly focused around the phenomena of Web 2.0, with endless ramblings of the new found popularity with facebook, myspace, secondlife and blogging.  The echoes of concern around the table sound familiar as early as the dawn of information age – privacy and control of personal information, accessibility of the new medium of communication, communities, power of media and publicity, or in many cases instant fame by virtually anyone in the world.

As we are coming out of 2007, undoubtedly the most influential technical word this year is “2.0″.  Anything that has the numerical link to it –*2.0 –seems to work magic and have enormous media coverage. Gen Y is taking the center stage, leading the way for new ways of community sharing, often personal information and thoughts.

Will this trend continue? Will Dec 2008 round-table be another excited chant of Web technologies 3.0 and beyond.  I think that it’s Yes.

Web 2.0 is not about technologies, but rather using the Internet as a collaborative communication medium. Funny that it took us one generation to figure these out.

My interview with BusinessWeek -

Companies can also use Semantic Web technologies to better respond to rapid change. Financial analysts and traders at Citigroup are inundated with information about fast-moving financial markets. So the banking powerhouse is looking at ways Semantic Web technologies can help extract valuable information, uncover trends, and generally help financial analysts, bankers, and traders make better decisions, says Rachel Yager, vice-president and program director of the semantic initiative at Citigroup.

See featured article at BusinessWeek.

My Semantic Web initiative was featured in MIT Technology Review:

One of the company’s early clients is Citigroup. The banking giant’s global head of capital markets and banking technology, Chris Augustin, is heading an initiative to use semantic technologies to organize and correlate information from diverse financial-data feeds. The goal is to help identify capital-market investment opportunities. “We are interested in providing our customers and traders with the latest information in the most relevant and timely manner to help them make the best decisions quickly,” says Rachel Yager, the program director overseeing the effort.

See featured article at MIT Technology Review.