P1110330 Patient information form illustrates a semantic triple

"Semantically Yours: Dating Tips for the Semantic Web" -- an introductory panel on Semantic Web -- explains the concept of a triple by pointing out that we create triples every time we fill out forms.

A subject-predicate-object triple: the person filling out the form is the subject, field labels are predicates, what you put in the blanks are objects. Thus by filling out a patient information form you are creating triples such as {Joe Schmoe, Home Address, 1000 Main Street} or {Joe Schmoe, Date of Birth, 1/1/1900}.

Semantic web is a loose set of methodologies that let us mark up in an HTML-like way the meaning of the text, instead of just its structure, therefore allowing computers extract meaning from texts they "read". The panel would have been even better if it hadn't tried to hard to achieve mainstream appeal by drawing parallels between semantic web and dating. But even renaming Linked Data Principles "The Bro Code", and urging people to "get your data a date" (i.e. link it to other data on the web) did not attract more than 10 people into the room.