Outreach and education are two areas that stand to gain from developments in semantic astronomy and an increased scientific presence on the web. Big changes have already taken place, driven by a community eager to connect and communicate about the research we do every day. As part of a panel at the AstroInformatics 2010 conference last week, I gave a talk on aspects of science communication and education that are benefiting from the semantic web.
The internet these days is a cacophony of conversations, opinions, visual information (and porn). Many scientists and science enthusiasts write about the stuff that inspires or excites them in blogs, like I do here, which allow them to connect to people they would never have encountered, let alone talked with, in real life. This has led to some great scientific content generated entirely by the science community itself, without intermediate brokerage by communication or media professionals. But in this symphony of chaos, how do we increase the signal to noise? How do we ensure that the best content is heard?
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