As reported in the press, the innovation programme THESEUS was launched at the IT
Summit held by the German government on 18 December 2006 in Potsdam. THESEUS
originally evolved from the German-French QUAERO project.
THESEUS is a research programme with the objective of making better use of internet
knowledge. Under its umbrella technical and user oriented core technologies and
standards for new products, tools, services and business models in the World Wide Web
are developed.
The focus of attention are semantic technologies, which identify content (such as words,
images, sounds) not by means of traditional methods (e.g. letter combinations) but can
recognise and classify the meaning of the information.
This programme, which is one of the main elements of the innovation initiative of the
German government, is coordinated by empolis and involves 27 research institutions,
universities and companies with related project plans. THESEUS is still subject to
successful notification with the EU Commission.
