This is a video recording of my keynote talk delivered at the EKAW 2012 conference in Galway, Ireland, on October 10, 2012.
In computer science, ontologies are commonly understood as partly formal definitions of the conceptual elements in a domain of interest shared to by a community of adopters. Historically, the term "ontology" has been borrowed from the field of philosophy, and its meaning slightly changed, by computer science researchers. A popular justification for ontology-related research have been the challenges for information exchange, processing, and intelligent behavior on the World Wide Web, with its vast body of content, huge user base, linguistic and representational heterogeneity, and so forth. Suprisingly, there are just very few ontologies that are relevant at Web scale in the sense that they are used by a broad, open audience.
In this keynote talk, I will discuss whether there is a fundamental difference between traditional ontologies and Web ontologies, and analyze the the specific economic, social, and technical challenges of building, maintaining, and using socially agreed, global data structures that are suited for the WWW at large, also with respect to the skills, expectations, and particular needs of companies and Web developers.
