"The May issue of Scientific American features an article outlining the Semantic Web, Tim Berners-Lee's latest drum to beat (see the W3C papers on it here.) The article explains:

The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.

This is one of those Extremely Noble and massively complex endeavors wherein academics, removed from the real world, attempt to solve a problem nobody has. (I fear MIT's Oxygen project will suffer a similar fate.) The only reason the Semantic Web gets any press is that Tim Berners-Lee, the "Father of the Web," is working on it.

History has shown us that technology inventors often haven't the faintest clue about the device's actual use. Did folks line up to hear what Philo T Farnsworth had to say about television?

Hypertext creators tend to have Extremely Noble intents for their technology. Douglas Engelbart was obsessed with "augmenting" intellect, and the first development of the WWW was definitely along those lines (for academics to compare notes). And the Semantic Web is no different. From the SciAm article:

If properly designed, the Semantic Web can assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole.

Problem being, no one, apart from some self-appointed Bringers Of Fire, wants their intellect augmented, nor really cares about the "evolution of human knowledge." The Web, this extremely exciting hypertext platform, serves other human needs and desires--primarily to communicate, also for sexual release (porn!), and for finding information of personal relevance (what's the weather where I'm traveling? how can I do my job better? where's my favorite band playing?)."