The URL is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/technology/02compute.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
>
> Group of University Researchers to Make Web Science a Field of Study
> By STEVE LOHR
>
> The Web has become such a force in commerce and culture that a group
> of leading university researchers now deems it worthy of its own field
> of study.
>
> The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of
> Southampton in Britain plan to announce today that they are starting a
> joint research program in Web science.
>
> Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Webs basic software, is leading the
> program. An Oxford-educated Englishman, Mr. Berners-Lee is a senior
> researcher at M.I.T., a professor at the University of Southampton and
> the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, an Internet
> standards-setting organization.
>
> Web science, the researchers say, has social and engineering
> dimensions. It extends well beyond traditional computer science, they
> say, to include the emerging research in social networks and the
> social sciences that is being used to study how people behave on the
> Web. And Web science, they add, shifts the center of gravity in
> engineering research from how a single computer works to how huge
> decentralized Web systems work.
>
> The Web isnt about what you can do with computers, Mr. Berners-Lee
> said. Its people and, yes, they are connected by computers. But
> computer science, as the study of what happens in a computer, doesnt
> tell you about what happens on the Web.
>
> The Web science program is an academic effort, but corporate
> technology executives and computer scientists said the research could
> greatly influence Web-based businesses. They pointed in particular to
> research by Mr. Berners-Lee and others to build more intelligence into
> the Web moving toward what is known as the Semantic Web as an area
> of study that could yield a big payoff.
>
> Web science represents a pretty big next step in the evolution of
> information, said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, who
> is a computer scientist. This kind of research, Mr. Schmidt added, 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.
>
> Web science is related to another emerging interdisciplinary field
> called services science. This is the study of how to use computing,
> collaborative networks and knowledge in disciplines ranging from
> economics to anthropology to lift productivity and develop new
> products in the services sector, which represents about three-fourths
> of the United States economy. Services science research is being
> supported by technology companies like I.B.M., Accenture and
> Hewlett-Packard, and by the National Science Foundation.
>
> Web science research, said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a technology
> strategist at I.B.M. and visiting professor at M.I.T., is a
> prerequisite to designing and building the kinds of complex,
> human-oriented systems that we are after in services science.
>
> Mr. Berners-Lee and his colleagues at the M.I.T. Computer Science and
> Artificial Intelligence Lab and in Britain have had preliminary
> discussions with government agencies in the United States and Europe
> that finance scientific research, as well as with leading technology
> companies. But Mr. Berners-Lee said his group had decided to publicly
> circulate their ideas about Web science before trying to attract
> government, foundation and corporate funding.
>
> With initial support from M.I.T. and the University of Southampton,
> the program will hold workshops on Web science and sponsor research
> fellowships. But we also want to educate and train people who can
> understand and analyze how these huge, complex systems on the Web
> work, said Wendy Hall, a professor at the University of
> Southampton. That means eventually having undergraduate and graduate
> programs in Web science.
>
> The M.I.T.-Southampton partnership, the researchers emphasized, is
> intended as a catalyst for Web science research at universities
> worldwide.
>
> Privacy, for example, will be one area of research in Web science. The
> traditional approach to protecting privacy has been to restrict access
> to databases containing personal information. But so much personal
> information is already available on the Web, often given voluntarily
> on sites like MySpace and Facebook, that the old approach will not
> work, said Daniel J. Weitzner, technology and society director at the
> Web consortium.
>
> On the Web, Mr. Weitzner said, a better way to try to guard privacy
> may be to develop rules, backed by accountability and sanctions, for
> how personal information is used by businesses, government agencies
> and individuals.
>
> Ben Shneiderman, a professor at the University of Maryland, said Web
> science was a promising idea. Computer science is at a turning point,
> and it has to go beyond algorithms and understand the social dynamics
> of issues like trust, responsibility, empathy and privacy in this vast
> networked space, Professor Shneiderman said. The technologists and
> companies that understand those issues will be far more likely to
> succeed in expanding their markets and enlarging their audiences.
>
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-- Dragomir R. Radev Associate Professor SI, CSE, Ling U. Michigan, Ann Arbor http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~radev radev@umich.edu
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