Today, systems, devices, sensors, data and human participation enable something more than a “human instructs machine” paradigm. Traditionally, we had to artificially simplify the complexity and richness of the real world to constrained computer models and languages for more efficient computation. Now, mobile and fixed sensors as well as human-in-the-loop sensing, social computing and ubiquitous Web access work in concert to enrich interactions, information sharing and collective intelligence. Increasingly intelligent systems and participatory sensing capture observations that can be contextually integrated and enhanced to create awareness of events and situations— they not only deal with documents or entities but also support situational awareness by incorporating thematic (“what”), temporal (“when”), spatial (”where”), causal (“why”) and other relationships between objects and events. This positions us for what we call an era of “computing for human experience” (CHE) that supports a seamless interaction between the physical world and the cyber world, which encompass integrated capabilities in sensing, perceiving and recognizing the physical world (e.g., in extending sensory engagement with environments and narrowing the gaps between the real world and computing). It also uses “humans as sensors” of intensions and emotions, historical facts or background knowledge and community generated knowledge or collective intelligence. Semantic (Web) techniques and technologies (annotations, conceptual models/ontologies and reasoning) play a central role in important tasks such as building context, integrating online and offline interactions, and help enhance human experience with focus on natural activities while relegating explicit computing and communication activities to background.

In this talk we will give a brief background of Kno.e.sis and discuss instances of semantics-empowered services computing, social networking and sensor Web that point to early capabilities towards CHE. An article in IEEE Internet Computing provides further information: http://bit.ly/HumanExperience

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