We no longer fully understand the web
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee wants to put the web under the microscope to investigate how it changes our behaviour. Paul Marks asked him what he hopes to achieve. Full Story »
Posted by Fabrice FlorinReview
I'm not personally familiar with New Scientist, however rather than a story or review, this is an interview with someone I completely trust - literally one of THE inventors of the internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. As such, Berners-Lee is to be believed and trusted when it comes to the internet and all related issues. Berners-Lee now admits the web has evolved to become more complicated than any of the original creators could have imagined and the issues that have arisen lack data and no real ways yet of thinking about how to address those issues, such as privacy and security.
Web science is already happening. People are studying the effect of the web within disciplines like social science, economics, psychology and law. Our Web Science Research Initiative aims to bring that research together. There are converging web-related issues cropping up, like privacy and security, that we currently have no way of thinking about. Nobody has thought to look at how people and the web combine as a whole – until now.
The internet evolves at such breakneck speed, I hope that science, psychology, law and economics (to name just a few,) are able to keep up and develop the scientific scrutiny that is needed – the alternative being almost to the point of a rampant chaotic structure that no one really understands.
Having worked on the web since the early 1990's, I have to agree with everything Sir Tim Berners-Lee says in this interview. (Well, how could I really disagree with the inventor of the internet!) Specifically, his suggestion that a whole new field of web science needs to be created to address the many issues that have arisen as the web has evolved.