Vision

Project Samarai

I have a dream for the Web . . . and it has two parts.

In the first part, the Web becomes a much more powerful means for collaboration between people. I have always imagined the information space as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create. [...] Furthermore, the dream of people-to-people communication through shared knowledge must be possible for groups of all sizes, interacting electronically with as much ease as they do now in person.

In the second part of the dream, collaborations extend to computers. Machines become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web - the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A "Semantic Web," which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy, and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines, leaving humans to provide the inspiration and intuition. The intelligent "agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the internet. From his book “Weaving the Web”

Project Samarai has been born out of a technicality. At the beginning was a simple research for a structureless data model. It took a few years and at the end we did not just find a structureless data model but, to our surprise, what we found opened the door to a new digital world.

A digital world in which information just is, available to anyone at any time, information is automatically present when needed; a world in which every person is not only able to find knowledge, but also to apply it. A world where information automatically merge and where there is no need for structured information storage. A world in which huge, structureless, semantic knowledge-repositories provide free access the accumulated knowledge of humanity, allowing free search and analysis, allowing to create structure from apparent chaos, allowing to gain new insight for everyone.

A world in which functional knowledge replaces applications and in which computers talk to each other and to humans without any protocol. A world in which digital agents autonomously execute complex tasks that have been explained to them by ordinary users. A world in which ordinary users are able to setup custom social networks, exactly the way they need them in order to communicate and collaborate with each other and with other computers.

Imagine you could tell your device what you want it to do in a similar way you can tell that to another human. Imagine you could express arbitrary information digitally and that information is not only universally understood by your device but if it contains instructions, your device can execute those instructions automatically, perform tasks autonomously, in collaboration with other computers and even with other humans, exactly as you ordered it to do. Imagine you can do that without using specialized applications and without the need for any programming skills. Imagine this happening directly on your own devices without having to send your personal information into the cloud.

Imagine a new generation of computer system that does not put applications and features at the center but your data and job. A system that allows you to freely choose information and that automatically surrounds those information with exchangeable functionality, depending on your current task, location, time and maybe even mood. A system in which information are universal, independent of application and operating system. A system that understands the information that it is dealing with and therefore can actively support you in getting your job done.

It is a new kind of computer language that can let these visions become reality.

A language that is unlike any other. A language that does not use letters, words and sentences but semantic tokens, relational bits and patterns. It is a language that is so powerful that it has the potential to fundamentally change the way how we communicate even if no one of us will ever speak it directly. A language that has the potential to profoundly change how we organize our communities, our businesses and ourselves. A language that allows us to express information in a way that computers understand and therefore can process, making them better and much more powerful tools. A language that is nothing less than an attempt at superseding text with a digital-semantic, multi-dimensional version.

Havel is such a language. A semantic graph language, a common language for humans and computers.

Using Havel, our information become universal, independent of applications. We will be able to share information like never before. Our computers will understand us and therefore become smarter tools; they will execute complex, distributed tasks autonomously in collaboration with other computers and humans. We will be able to communicate and collaborate in ways most of us have never even thought of.

With Havel, our thoughts will come alive. Instead of text, we will share semantic representations of information with unequaled detail and complexity. We can design our ideas and merge them with our collective information universe. Information can be automatically analyzed and interpreted using the cumulated knowledge of humanity.