Semi-automatic creation of semantic networks

The vision of the Semantic Web ist one of extending the World Wide Web of today to one "[..] in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." (Tim Berners-Lee in an article for the Scientific American in 2001). This promises an exciting future for the WWW. The advantages for users and machines alike are eminent, many of the building stones like RDF or OWL are in place already. But why has the Semantic Web not been adopted by more content creators, more web sites? The main technological reason for this lies in the complexity associated with the creation of ontologies. Ontologies are, following a definition of T. R. Gruber, a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization of a given domain[1]. As such, they are an essential part of every semantic web application, since they define the language used to express the view on the world. But their creation is a time-consuming and expensive endeavour that is beyond many organisations or communities. Most therefore stay away from the Semantic Web altogether. This severely handicaps the efforts of bringing about the vision of the Semantic Web, by preventing the attainment of a critical mass of content available using it.