Web scienceWeb science

university of the Aegean, department of Cultural technology

Michalis Vafopoulos, 2008

PCI 2008, Samos

contents

•Web timeline & characteristics •Web science timeline•Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI)•What is Web Science?•Research issues•Research example: privacy•Web Science: why this matters

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Web timeline & characteristics

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eras description basic value source

Pre Web 1980’s

The desktop is the platform Computations[no network effect]

Web1.0:90’s

documents“Surfing” Web: The browser is the platform

hyper-linking of documents

Web2.0: 00’s

peopleSocial Web: The Web is the platform

social dimension of linkage properties

Web3.0:10’s

dataSemantic Web: The Graph is the platform

URI-based semantic linkages

Web4.0:20’s

abilitiesMetacomputing: The network is the platform

+ processing power hyper-linking

Web science timeline1991: Tim Berners-Lee presents Web in Geneva (CERN) 1993: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is established ::2003 : FHW - TBL presents his ideas on Semantic web2005: The Web Science Workshop, London• Chairs: Tim Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall • Organizing Committee: J.Hendler, N. Shadbolt, D. Weitzner 11/2006: Web Science Research Initiative is established2007: “A Framework for Web Science” is published2007: the book is translated to Greek/introduced in Univ.4/2008: EU FET workshop in Web science4/2008: 2nd Web Science Workshop, China7/2008: Summer Doctoral Program, Oxford9/2008: Web science curriculum workshop, UK

20092009: : 11stst World Conference in Web science World Conference in Web science 18-20 March 200918-20 March 2009 , call to be announced, call to be announcedFoundation of the Hellenic World Foundation of the Hellenic World Keynote speaker: Tim Berners-LeeKeynote speaker: Tim Berners-Lee

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Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI)

A joint venture:

• MIT’s CSAIL

• Southampton’s ECS

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WSRI aims

• promote and encourage transdisciplinary collaborative research to study the development of the Web

• provide a global forum to enable academia, government and industry to understand the scientific, technical and social factors that drive the growth of the Web and enable innovation

• devise curricula for the new discipline of Web Science so as to train future generations of Web Scientists

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directors

the reputations, experience and skills of WSRI Directors enables it to work closely alongside academia, government, industry and donors to realize it’s aims

Tim

Ber

ners

-Lee

Wen

dy H

all

Nig

el S

hadb

olt

Dan

iel W

eitz

ner

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launch 11/2006

“Web Science represents a pretty big next step in the evolution of information. This kind of research is likely to have a lot of influence on the next generation of researchers, scientists and, most importantly, the next generation of entrepreneurs who will build new companies from this.”

Dr Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google Inc.

“Web Science research is a prerequisite to designing and building the kinds of complex, human-oriented systems that we are after in services science.”

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP, Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM Corporation.

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WSRI Operational Phases

Phase 1: Nov 06 to Nov 07Launched the concept and targeted activities

Phase 2: Dec 07 to Nov 08Establish a lean organization in America and Europe

Phase 3: Dec 08 onwardsBuild a global organization and expand activity base

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Web Science Research: Some of the issues

• the structure of the Web• effective protocols for the Web• social effects on the Web• meaning in the Web• fragmentation of the Web• rates of change on the Web…

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What WSRI do: thought leadership

• a global forum of experts to raise awareness, lead thinking and disseminate information

• provide corporations, governments and regulators with the capability to anticipate future developments

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What WSRI do: education

• collaborate to develop degree courses and curriculum

• modify and extend, evolve current courses

• build capacity for this new field

• motivated students tackling a real and important set of challenges

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What is Web Science?

•One of the envelope questions of Web Science could be what technological and other changes need to be made in order for the Web to work better?

•A lot of work already has been done in various disciplinary frameworks (e.g. computer science, social and political sciences etc.) about the Web, but needs to be organized and initiate new work in a broader context in order to answer the above kind of questions.

•The transdisciplinary field of Web science is taking the Web as its primary object of study.

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Web Science is transdisciplinary

PhysicsStatistical MechanicsPhase Transitions…

Political ScienceGovernance

Democratic Mechanisms…

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research issues

• simple principles and protocols (e.g. links) create complex structures - the Web

• simple behaviors (e.g. Blogging) create complex phenomena - the Blogosphere

• anticipating new principles and behaviors• Scale-free & fractal nature of the Web• why over the Web the numbers of links into and links out of

any Web page obey a Power Law• …

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research example: privacy

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Web Science: why this matters

• can you imagine life without the Web?• the Web matters• an essential part of humanity• understanding the Web is a major

challenge as big as any other global cause

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Thanks for your attention.

Michalis Vafopoulos

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