According to the W3C's URI Activity Statement:

"The World Wide Web may be defined as the universal, all-encompassing space containing all Internet resources referenced by Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). The Web is dominated today by relatively few technologies, including the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Perhaps more fundamental than either HTTP or HTML are the URIs, which are simple text strings that refer to Internet resources. URIs may refer to documents, to resources, to people, and indirectly to anything....

"...The URI Activity will address the broad spectrum of issues regarding the relationship between all kinds of identifiers and Internet resources."

If the promise of URIs is realized, they will enable a world of hyper-aware devices. Combined with artificial intelligence and accompanying technologies, they could point in the direction of artificial "omniscience" (or so the dreamers dream).