How will we interact with the web of data

The Semantic Web is a global information space of linked data, designed not for human use but for consumption by machines. Right? Well, yes and no. It's true to say that machine-readable data, given explicit semantics and published online, coupled with the ability to link data in distributed data sets are the key selling points of the Semantic Web. Together, these features allow aggregation and integration of heterogeneous data on an unprecedented scale, and machines will do the grunt work for us. However, without a human being somewhere in this process, to reap the rewards of these new capabilities, the endeavour is meaningless. Far from removing human beings from the equation, a Web of machine-readable data creates significant challenges and significant opportunities for human-computer interaction. To date, the Semantic Web community has mostly been busy developing the technical infrastructure to make the Web of Data feasible in principle and on publishing linked data sets in order to make it a reality. If we are to fully exploit the challenges and opportunities of a Web of Data from a human perspective, we need to move beyond the initial phase and work to understand how this changes the user interaction paradigm of the Web