The Semantic Web, or a Web of "machine-processable data," is under development around the globel, including the U.K.'s Southampton University, where Berners-Lee holds a position. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which Berners-Lee founded, is working on the components that will form the basis of the Semantic Web.
Berners-Lee and the W3C describe the Semantic Web as a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across applications, enterprises and communities. It will be to maps, calendars, spreadsheets and other data storage tools what the World Wide Web has been to written information, he said.
"It's about being able to connect from one application, through another," he said.
He provided an example of someone who is trying to fill out a tax form and cannot remember why he or she spent a certain amount. They could pull up a bank statement, take the date, and pull that up on their personal calendar. If they still don't see why they spent the money that day, they could drop their photographs into the calendar and "see the pictures of the kids at Disneyland."
"Now, imagine a scientist trying to figure out where a certain virus is coming from," he said, adding that the scientist could combine genomics, proteomics and maps, or any part of the sum of human knowledge about the illness, into one location to seek clues.
The Web's next most important application is likely being dreamed up somewhere by someone, "quite likely a woman," Berners-Lee said, who is frustrated by something and will not have to ask if he or she can use existing architecture before building that application.
Berners-Lee urged lawmakers to keep in mind the principle of universality and the separation of layers. He said the most important thing legislators should remember, as they deliberate over issues affecting the World Wide Web is the importance of protecting communication, which allows science, politics, education, romance and even personal diaries, to flourish.
"Communication between people is what makes us a society," Berners-Lee said, adding that. "The World Wide Web is, together, technology and society. It is computers and people."
Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, told Berners-Lee that lawmakers would like to continue consulting with him for years to come as they craft technology policy.
