The Fractal Nature of the Semantic Web

In the past, many knowledge representation systems failed because they were too monolithic and didn't scale well, whereas other systems failed to have an impact because they were small and isolated. Along with this tradeoff in size, there is also a constant tension between the cost involved in building a larger community that can interoperate through common terms and the cost of the lack of interoperability. The semantic web offers a good compromise between these approaches as it achieves wide-scale communication and interoperability using finite effort and cost. The semantic web is a set of standards for knowledge representation and exchange that is aimed at providing interoperability across applications and organizations. We believe that the gathering success of this technology is not derived from the particular choice of syntax or of logic.