The document discusses the evolution of the web from a network of linked documents accessible to humans, to a network of linked data accessible to machines through semantic technologies. It outlines the development of linked open data starting in the early 2000s with projects publishing data in RDF/XML. This allowed machines to understand relationships between things, not just documents, enabling new applications and insights. The document argues this emerging "Web of Data" will allow machines to help humans gain new understandings by making sense of the vast amounts of machine-readable knowledge online.