20 July 2014

Semantic Nature

Understanding our Earth is important as it provides for valuable answers. Nature provides us a means of developing cures as well as a way of understanding our place on Earth. As humans we want to be able to track all the living things on Earth and develop a connection with them. Nature also provides a huge amount of data on human life and the transitive effects overtime. Taking inspiration from Noah could be one form of improving on the Linnaeus taxonomy schema and providing a universal Semantic Web of Nature. This would allow for a linked data for scientists and the development of connected services for much needed research. One could then also utilize the open community on modifications to a type as new species and sub-species are discovered, similar in approach to Freebase and Wikipedia. Knowledge discovery in such a connected manner would allow for a multitude of research options for collaboration and interconnected sharing of both interests and findings. Often having two of each is enough to build a taxonomy similar to the Noah's Ark. Also, linked data on nature and wildlife would enable more applications in tracking animal behavior patterns as well as when they become at risk of extinction. Even total population counts through animal tagging can be semantically enabled. Perhaps, even the approach to Internet of Things would take ubiquity of applications to new heights. One could even build a taxonomy of animal communication and provide for natural language parsers in this domain. Semantic Web holds the key to unlocking a lot of the untapped potential of machines of today in providing for much needed intelligence for smart applications, especially for the real-world, where problems not only have complexities in uncertainty but also in multiple dimensions. There is much that we still do not know about the world we live in. The more we are able to contextualize and utilize machines for reasoning, the more we become productive and efficient in discovering knowledge.