**5. Conclusions**

In this chapter I have proposed a new definition of information (as a description, a linguistic text, a piece of a story or a tale) and a clear segregation between two different types of information – physical and semantic information. I hope, I have clearly explained the (usually obscured and mysterious) interrelations between data and physical information as well as the relations between physical information and semantic information. Consequently, usually indefinable notions of "knowledge", "memory" and "learning" have also received their suitable illumination and explanation.

Traditionally, semantics is seen as a feature of human language communication praxis. However, the explosive growth of communication technologies (different from the original language-based communication) has led to an enormous diversification of matters which are being communicated today – audio and visual content, scientific and commercial, military and medical health care information. All of them certainly bear their own non-linguistic semantics (Pratikakis et al, 2011). Therefore, attempts to explain and to clarify these new forms of semantics are permanently undertaken, aimed to develop tools and services which would enable to handle this communication traffic in a reasonable and meaningful manner. In the reference list I provide some examples of such undertakings: "The Semantics of Semantics" (Petrie, 2009), "Semantics of the Semantic Web" (Sheth et al, 2005), "Geospatial Semantics" (Di Donato, 2010), "Semantics in the Semantic Web" (Almeida et al, 2011).

What is common to all those attempts is that notions of data, information, knowledge and semantics are interchanged and swapped generously, without any second thought about what implications might follow from that. In this regard, even a special notion of Data Semantics was introduced (Sheth, 1995) and European Commission and DARPA are pushing research programs aimed on extracting meaning and purpose from bursts of sensor data (Examples of such research roadmaps could be found in my last presentation at The 3-rd Israeli Conference on Robotics, November 2010, available at my website http://www.vidia-mant.info). However, as my present definition claims – data and information are not interchangeable, physical information is not a substitute for semantic information, and data is semantics devoid (semantics is a property of a human observer, not a property of the data).

Contrary to the widespread praxis (Zins, 2007), I have defined semantics as a special kind of information. Revitalizing the ideas of Bar-Hillel and Carnap (Bar-Hillel & Carnap, 1952) I have recreated and re-established (on totally new grounds) the notion of semantics as the notion of Semantic Information.

Considering the crucial role that information usage, search for, exchange and exploration have gained in our society, I dare to think that clarifying the notion of semantic information will illuminate many shady paths which Semantic Web designers and promoters are forced to take today, deprived from a proper understanding of semantic information peculiarities. As a result, information processing principles are substituted by data processing tenets (Chignell & Kealey, 2010); the objective nature of physical information is confused with the subjective nature of semantic information. For that reason, Semantic Web search engines are continue to be built relying on statistics of linguistic features. I hope my chapter will let to avoid such lapses.
