Data-Web induction

Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at Southampton University, came to talk to a group of senior editors this week. She's working with Tim Berners-Lee on the next iteration of the web - web 3.0, the Semantic Web or, as she prefers to call it, the data-web. There were three parts to her talk: the structure of the web and nature of web science; a warning we should not take it for granted and a glimpse of what the data web might mean.

On the structure of the web she described how Tim Berners-Lee came to build it, described the days when it existed on a single server and he could count the number of websites as they were added. Today the web is growing faster than we can look at it. She talked about the three layers of the internet - technology, content and regulation and policy - all vital to its existence. Web Science is developing as a mixture of disciplines: computer science, web engineering, maths, psychology, biology, sociology, ecology, artificial intelligence, economics, law, media and the socio-cultural.

She talked about the circle of development from an idea through design and technology to a micro-model which serves a social need. This is then expanded into a macro model through a period of unpredictable complexity - and it was hard to foretell the use to which any particular micro model might be put in a wider context. The Macro would then be analysed, issues identified and, with creativity, new ideas emerge.

Search was perhaps the obvious model.

Although optimistic about the future, she stressed it was important to raise awareness that the internet is vulnerable. "There is no guarantee the web will continue as it is or even at all in the future". She cited plans to develop a parallel business net as an example of what might change the way we currently understand and use the web fundamentally - suggesting those who supported the idea didn't understand the consequences. And the kinds of threats ( to access, openness, security) discussed at the UN's Internet Governance Forum. (Disclosure: Im on the advisory group for the IGF).

Finally she tried to describe the difference between the current web - a collection of interactive documents - and a data-driven web. I think it's fair to say many in the room didn't completely understand it, but there was a sense that a fundamental transformation of information technology is only two or three years away.