The invitation from MIT to a press event at 10 a.m. tomorrow promises the "announcement of a major initiative to guide the further evolution of the World Wide Web," headlined by its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee.
While devoid of details, the invitation makes clear that we're talking about something on a grander scale than the notion of "Reinventing HTML," which Berners-Lee outlined on his blog last week, sparking animated discussion in forums such as the W3C's Quality Assurance blog and Slashdot.
"As the Web celebrates its first decade of widespread use, we have still only scratched the surface of what could be realized with deeper scientific investigation into its design, operation, and impact on society," says the invitation. "This press briefing with Tim Berners-Lee … will unveil a major new initiative aimed at understanding the Web's potential and insuring its continued growth."
Here's one possibility: "Further evolution" plus "deeper scientific investigation" plus a some googling returns "A Framework for Web Science," a treatise published last month by Berners-Lee and a handful of academics, including fellow MITer Daniel Weitzner, director of the W3C's technology and society activities, who is also on the bill for tomorrow's press conference.
The "Web Science" concept was introduced in the Aug. 11 edition of Science magazine in another article -- Creating a Science of the Web -- whose group byline was headed by Berners-Lee and included Weitzner. That article, which will cost non-subscribers $10 to access online, opens with this paragraph:
"Since its inception, the World Wide Web has changed the ways scientists communicate, collaborate, and educate. There is, however, a growing realization among many researchers that a clear research agenda aimed at understanding the current, evolving, and potential Web is needed. If we want to model the Web; if we want to understand the architectural principles that have provided for its growth; and if we want to be sure that it supports the basic social values of trustworthiness, privacy, and respect for social boundaries, then we must chart out a research agenda that targets the Web as a primary focus of attention."
Tracing the genesis of this effort back further takes us to a "Web Science Workshop" hosted in London by the British Computer Society in September 2005. An invitation-only event attended by 20 academics, it included presentations by Berners-Lee and Weitzner.
From a summary of that event:
"It was structured to consider fundamental questions in a range of Web technologies including:
-- The networking needs for continued scaling of decentralized technology;
-- The scientific challenges of managing and searching for information in the growing Web space;
-- The means for managing the space of concepts and semantics needed for understanding and processing the emerging Web of data;
-- The challenges that arise when attempting to discover, invoke and compose a globally distributed and constantly evolving set of services;
-- The development of peer-to-peer and other architectures needed for continued Web scaling;
-- The interface needs for exploring and using the increasingly complex information space that is the future Web.
-- Social, cultural and legal challenges raised by the evolving Web and means by which computer scientists and others can shape technology to address such issues."
Of course, this is only one man's attempt at connecting the dots and may not bear any resemblance to what actually happens at MIT tomorrow. But it sure looks as though we might be seeing the debut of an MIT Center for Web Science -- or something of some such name.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
