  We present our vision for a departure from the established way of
architecting and assessing communication networks, by incorporating the
semantics of information for communications and control in networked systems.
We define semantics of information, not as the meaning of the messages, but as
their significance, possibly within a real time constraint, relative to the
purpose of the data exchange. We argue that research efforts must focus on
laying the theoretical foundations of a redesign of the entire process of
information generation, transmission and usage in unison by developing:
advanced semantic metrics for communications and control systems; an optimal
sampling theory combining signal sparsity and semantics, for real-time
prediction, reconstruction and control under communication constraints and
delays; semantic compressed sensing techniques for decision making and
inference directly in the compressed domain; semantic-aware data generation,
channel coding, feedback, multiple and random access schemes that reduce the
volume of data and the energy consumption, increasing the number of supportable
devices.
