KUALA LUMPUR, 17 OCTOBER 2008 - A Malaysian government applied research agency wants the country to be recognised as the first Web 3.0 society in the world.
MIMOS is driving the semantic technology industry in the nation towards this goal.
According to its president and chief executive officer, Dato’ Abdul Wahab Abdullah, the focus is on transferring semantic technology platforms, developed by MIMOS, to the local industries.
This will be in line with the agency’s mission to pioneer information and communications technology (ICT) towards growing globally competitive indigenous industries.
“Semantic technology is driving the next generation of the Web, the semantic Web, a machine-readable Web of intelligent data and automated services that amplify the Web far beyond its current capabilities,” said Dato’ Wahab, at the agency’s Semantics Symposium in Malaysia.
The symposium, themed Future of Semantics Technology, attracted more than 100 participants from the government, industry, academia as well as students.
Dato’ Wahab said the event was a platform for participants to gain insights and first-hand knowledge of semantic technology from renowned North American and European experts.
The speakers included American professor, John Sowa of Vivomind, Austrian professor, Klaus Tochtermann of Know Centre, US-based Franz’s Sheng-Chuan Wu, and Australian professor, Brian Garner of Knowledge Networks.
Intelligent applications across sectors
Dato’ Wahab said MIMOS’ semantic technology platform has the potential to deploy intelligent applications in various industries, such as business, finance, agriculture, healthcare, transport and public safety.
The agency has established a centre of excellence (CoE) in semantic technology, aimed at enhancing the use of ontology and semantic Web technologies to automate the collection, modelling, organisation and retrieval of knowledge. This is in collaboration with local and foreign universities and industry players.
Computers will ‘understand’ meaning
Dato’ Wahab said semantic technology enables computers to achieve a higher degree of “understanding” of the information they process. This provides users with better ways to navigate through vast amounts of information and to find the relevant facts. “The semantic Web allows publishing of structured data, the meaning of which is described and understood by both people and computers.”
Dato’ Wahab added that MIMOS partners included foreign universities and organisations, such as the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Austrian University Technology Graz, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and US organisations Franz and Vivomind.
He said that as well as collaborating with Universiti Malaysia Sabah, MIMOS has also established a joint research lab at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and is working with its faculty of computing science and information technology on language technology initiatives for commercialisation of such technology.
