BOOK REVIEW

The exponential growth of the data on the Web has not only enabled hundreds of millions of users to access and share information at anytime anywhere but also resulted in a vast amount of data at our fingertips. Transformation of information into knowledge is essential for human to enhance our ability to live and work effectively. Unfortunately the lack of structure and machine-readable semantics of today s online information has made the transformation of industrial, social, and scientific society from information-based to knowledge-based a hard problem. The knowledge Grid presents a new frontier in the Internet and grid computing technology by pushing the traditional computational grid and the present data and information grid beyond the current abstraction of cyberspace (Web and Internet). A computational grid provides a supercomputing platform by sharing of distributed resources for large computational tasks. A data grid provides an infrastructure to allow homogeneous access to heterogeneous and geographically distributed information sources. The Knowledge Grid, however, provides the next generation interconnection environment that enables people and machines to effectively capture, publish, share and manage knowledge resources. The goal of the Knowledge Grid is to unleash the full technological and supercomputing capabilities while providing more effective and efficient management and utilization of heterogeneous computing resources on the Internet. Its potential benefits for the development of human civilization may well be beyond imagination. This book, by professor Hai Zhuge, the founder of the China Knowledge Grid research group, is the first monograph in this area, uncovering most recent development of the Knowledge Grid, from the methodology, theories, models, to applications and future trends on the Knowledge Grid.