What that amounted to for Einstein, according to a 2006 paper, was a “cosmic religious feeling” that required no “anthropomorphic conception of God.” He explained this view in the New York Times Magazine: “The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.”

“We have known as humans for thousands of years that it is critical to understand humankind’s place on this planet, even before we understand the essence of who we are, and we do this by looking at where we have come from. This fulfils an obligation of wisdom. You cannot hope to look at the rest of the world and understand it without understanding yourself. There is no more important question, especially in the light of some of the big questions which face us in relation to climate change. “We have floundered about observing the world without understanding truly that we are part of this system. We have an evolutionary history as complex as any other animal but likely no more so. That is the beauty that naledi brings to the table. It takes away this human arrogance which has been much of the cause of our destructive behaviour, this right to ownership, this right to destruction, the territorial nature of our behaviour towards this planet. “We have seen ourselves as superior, as special, we’ve told ourselves a special origins story that isn’t true. What can be more important than taking yourself off that pedestal and removing some of the destructive behaviours that manifest in humans?

As the power is unleashed, computers on the Semantic Web achieve at first the ability to describe, then to infer, and then to reason. The schema is a huge step, and one that will enable a vast amount of interoperability and extra functionality. However, it still only categorizes data. It says nothing about meaning or understanding.