Theseus Program is a research program initiated in 2006 by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Germany) with the goal of developing a new Internet-based infrastructure in order to better use and utilize the knowledge available on the Internet. To this end, application-oriented basic technologies and technical standards are to be developed and tested. The expected results are novel products, tools, services, and business models for the World Wide Web, as well as for the service and knowledge society of tomorrow.
The focus of the research program is on Computational linguistics and semantic technologies, which determine contents (words, images, and sounds) not through conventional methods (e.g., combinations of letters) but which are able to recognize and place the meaning of a content in its proper context. Using these technologies, computer programs can intelligently comprehend the context in which data were stored. In addition, by applying rules and order principles, computers can draw logical inferences from the contents and autonomously recognize and produce connections between various pieces of information from different sources.