I thought the readers of my blog would be very interested in the following book:
Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business
The book, written by David Siegel, explains the Semantic Web in business terms. The book has an entire chapter on XBRL. There are 12 reviews, 11 are "5 star" and 1 is "4 star". From one of the reviews:
"I was looking for something that explains the Semantic Web more from a strategic rather then a technical perspective. This book really helped me to understand how the Semantic Web can be applied. There are numerous real-live examples. From shipping products to health-care, tax, real estate, financial data (XBRL), search & security - everywhere you will find examples of businesses that already use or transition to the Semantic-Web."
The book has a companion web site which can be found here. One of the very interesting things about the web site is a series of "tours" of the Semantic Web. Entrepreneurs, managers, investors, and standardistas each have their own tour.
Like I said in a previous post, business professionals who don't understand what metadata is is at a disadvantage. The Semantic Web is important. It is strategic.
I want to point something out. XBRL has been referred to as "One of the more successful Semantic Web metadata formats." XBRL started 10 years ago. The US SEC and many other regulators around the world are "priming the Semantic Web pump", so to speak. You may not want to become an expert in XBRL or the Semantic Web. But it seems to me that at a minimum the "risk" that something is going on here is worth the price of the book and a few hours of reading it to see for yourself what is going down.