Work-Centered Services for the Semantic Web
Andrew Potter · 2002
The Semantic Web will enable systems to communicate intelligently with one another. As this occurs, the nature and extent of human interaction with computers will alter correspondingly. Although the characteristics of interaction cannot be fully anticipated, it is clear that as systems gain intelligence and autonomy, the demands placed on them will become more exacting. To meet these expectations, the Semantic Web should incorporate work-centered services. These services will provide focused, intelligent points of contact between the Web and its users. Users will access work-centered services to formulate and conduct investigations, and to collect, organize, and analyze results. Work-centered services will direct tasks in behalf of the user and communicate with the user in a humanly coherent manner. As a result, the concept of the user interface will broaden and deepen to include specialized agents, possessing the expertise to assemble information for end-user consumption. These agents will occupy the web-continuum just as any other knowledge resources. This paper introduces the concept of work-centered services and describes related research and development being performed as part of the KnoWeb project. Introduction The Semantic Web will provide intelligent content for use by automated systems, enabling software services to perform distributed reasoning using Web resources (Berners-Lee, Lassila). Agents will be able to solve complex problems by gathering information from diverse sources and synthesizing a result tailored to the user’s requirements. “Searching the Web,” now a predominate pastime among Web users, will diminish in favor of more proactive forms of information retrieval and problem solving. The user experience will evolve to take advantage of these new possibilities. Just as the expert systems of the eighties fostered new requirements for the user interface (Hendler, Potter), the Semantic Web brings new challenges for user interface designers. As the Web is employed to undertake tasks previously accomplished by other means (or not accomplished at all), the significant points of contact between the Web and end-users are redefined. To the extent that we may attribute intelligence to Web resources (i.e. to the extent that the Web is semantic), the reasoning processes performed on our behalf need to be visible. Further, the complexity of resources through which information may be distilled and synthesized indicates that the user will interact with information deriving from a confluence of sources. The user interface must be able to present this information coherently and credibly. To meet these demands, the Semantic Web needs to include work-centered services. Work-centered services will act as intelligent liaisons, intelligent points of contact, between user applications and the greater Web. Users will access these services to formulate and conduct investigations, to collect, organize, and analyze results, to direct tasks in behalf of the user, and to communicate with users in a