News Story

KMi leads on the Pragmatic Web

Simon Buckingham Shum, Tuesday 13 February 2007 | Annotate

KMi is already one of the world's leaders in Semantic Web research and deployment. Now we're showing the way with the Pragmatic Web, which focuses on the design of Web tools that recognise how context fundamentally shapes conversations and commitments. After presenting KMi's work on Hypermedia Discourse at the inaugural 2006 conference, Simon Buckingham Shum was invited to co-chair the 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, which is forging new links with related communities in this emerging field, including argumentation, e-social action and social informatics. The call for participation sets out the challenge: "TRUST AND COMMITMENT: Whether we look at our geo-political and environmental context, work within and between organizations, or our local communities, there has never been a greater need for understanding across cultural, intellectual, and other boundaries. Whether the context is international policy, distributed teamwork, e- business, or community mobilisation, fundamentally, people must build trust and commitment to common goals by talking and acting together. What role does the Web have to play in these complex processes?" Understanding web pragmatics for more effective human-human interaction and negotiation complements the Semantic Web's focus on enabling machine-machine interaction and negotiation.

Related Links:

• 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web
• ICPW 2006 paper: Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective