AND Data's mission is to provide a language and knowledge framework that will improve communication between people by providing standard data within computer systems on a global level. To this end AND is building a database of the English language with each sense of each word mapped to a classification scheme. By classifying words in such a manner we can remove ambiguity from word meanings to facilitate comprehension of documents, to aid machine processing and human understanding. In addition AND Data is compiling classified sets of proper nouns of people, places, organizations, and products for specific market segments and business applications. Using this data we can determine possible classifications for a document and identify the people, products etc.
Communication is based on common understanding.
The advent of electronic publishing, and especially the advent of the world wide web has introduced new facets to communication. Anonymous communication is facilitated, removing traditional social cues such as facial expression or voice tone. Barriers to publication have been lowered, manuscripts no longer have to pass through an editor, to a printing press, to a distribution network before being read, anyone can publish anything on the web without correction or review. RDF goes someway towards expressing what a document is about, but on its own cannot express any level of trust about the document. Digital signature specifications, such as DSig, allow assertions about a document to be signed.