SemanticWeb on emsenn.net

Semantic Web, Jiangshi Web

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

The Semantic Web did not fail. RDF graphs are queried daily, knowledge graphs underpin search engines, biomedical ontologies coordinate research across institutions. The problem is not that the Semantic Web stopped working but that it works in a particular way — data circulates, queries execute, triples accumulate, and none of it can question whether its own categories still fit.

Chinese folklore has a figure for this condition: the jiangshi (僵尸), the hopping corpse. A body whose joints have locked, animated by residual vital energy but incapable of flexible movement. The jiangshi is not dead. Its problem is more specific: it cannot change how it moves.

JSON-LD

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a method of encoding structured data using JSON syntax. It allows web pages to embed machine-readable descriptions of their content — what kind of thing a page describes, who created it, when it was published — alongside the human-readable HTML.

How it works

A JSON-LD block is placed inside a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag in the page’s <head> or <body>. It contains a JSON object with a @context (typically https://schema.org) and a @type declaring what kind of thing is being described.

Schema.org

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Schema.org is a collaborative vocabulary for structured data on the web, maintained jointly by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex since 2011. It provides a shared set of types (like Article, Person, DefinedTerm) and properties (like author, datePublished, description) that web pages use to describe their content in machine-readable form.

How it works

Schema.org defines a type hierarchy. Thing is the root. Below it sit types like CreativeWork (which includes Article, Book, LearningResource), Person, Organization, and Place. Each type has properties that describe instances of that type.

Structured data

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Structured data is machine-readable information embedded in a web page that describes the page’s content in a standardized vocabulary. Where HTML presents content for humans, structured data presents it for machines — search engines, AI agents, knowledge graph crawlers, and other automated systems.

Forms

Three encoding formats are widely used:

JSON-LD — a JSON block in the page’s <script> tag. Recommended by Google. Used by emsenn.net.
Microdata — HTML attributes (itemscope, itemprop) inline with content.
RDFa — RDF attributes embedded in HTML tags.

All three formats use the same underlying vocabulary, most commonly Schema.org.