A friend asked me about the semantic web, and this was my reply. Librarians – yes? Am I close?

To understand the semantic web, you need to wear scarves and wool
hipster hats. You need to grow a soul patch, and go vegan (sorry
Rip’s!) You need to go on and on about how great your new favorite
import beer is, and scoff at anyone who still likes your previous
favorite. You need to talk in abstracts, like artists, without much
real world example to pull from. You need to define an alternative
reality that solves all problems, jump into it entirely, and then blink
absently at anyone who hasn’t caught on yet.

I’m not quite there (it’s more an information science PHD topic than a
library masters), so I don’t really get the semantic web. But I did
have a bourbon cask ale the other day that was amazing.

Okay, real answer time: People speak in context and syntax, and we use
those tools to communicate/understand. Computers have a much harder
time with that. They don’t get inflections, or context. Computers
don’t often get my puns. So, the semantic web is a way to try to fix
that… either by making computers smarter, AI, better search, SkyNet –
or by adding more structure and linking to data. The semantic web looks
at ways to start to do that. It’s not really a new information idea,
although it often bills itself as such – maybe to get attention or cred.
The semantic web is the next big thing that hasn’t caught on yet (and
might never catch on).