The agentic web is here
The 2001 Semantic Web article always read like a beautiful daydream that required everyone to behave. You had to structure your data, label everything, make the web machine-readable in a rigid way. Humans never bothered. The agentic web skips all that. Large language models just read the messy, human web as it is, and suddenly Berners-Lee's vision is here without the homework.
I think that's the genuinely wild part. The agents he imagined would need a perfectly organized library. Ours are more like clever interns who can work in a cluttered office. They can book flights, argue with customer service, compare prices, maybe even sign things on our behalf. That's convenient and a little unsettling.
What I'd want to know next is accountability. If an agent makes a purchase, negotiates a contract, or gets tricked by a scam page, who answers for it? The person who set it loose, the company that built it, or nobody at all? We're about to find out, and the answer will shape whether this web feels like magic or like handing your wallet to a stranger.