An article from the Scientific American, The Semantic Web, describes several examples of how semantic understanding by computers will help to revolutionize the utility of technology in the future. It's now very late on the West Coast, so I'll simply provide you with the links, and let you do your own research today.

• Forum thread at SEW on Mspace and several other semantic-related projects.
• Clarification post by Xan Porter on the views of semantics
• Explanation of ontologies on and off the web from semanticweb.org