Sir Tim Berners-Lee appeared on this morning's BBC Radio 4 Today Programme to express his concerns about the future of his invention, the World Wide Web, and how he believes we can make it better.
Since its conception in 1989, a mere 17 years ago, Sir Tim's invention has had a massive impact on nearly every aspect of world wide society. Because the internet is still in its infancy we are only just beginning to come to terms with its impact on our lives, not to mention its potential future impact. Many even predict that the modern image of a web-user - an individual simply sitting at a screen with a mouse and a keyboard - will be hopelessly antiquated in a few short years.
Berners-Lee came up with the idea of an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. He is now the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Senior Researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics & Computer Science. In recognition of his "services to the global development of the Internet", London born Berners-Lee was knighted in the 2004 New Year's Honours list.
He recently told the Today Programme:
"If we don't have the ability to understand the web as it's now emerging, we will end up with things that are very bad. Certain undemocratic things could emerge and misinformation might start spreading over the web. Studying these forces and the way they're affected by the underlying technology is one of the things that we think is really important".
His plans to develop a new research initiative in the emerging field of Web Science are now underway through collaboration between MIT's CSAIL and the University of Southampton's ECS. He expects the long term research collaboration, an in-depth study of the social implications of the web's development, will have a direct influence on the future progress of the World Wide Web. The Web Science Research Initiative aims to understand the scientific, technical and social challenges which underpin the growth of the web.
Sir Tim further explained that the Web Science Research Initiative wasn't just about computer science. He said:
"All kinds of disciplines are going to have to converge. People with all kinds of skills are going to have to work together to build a new web which is going to be even better. There aren't any courses at the moment and it hasn't really been brought together. We're hearing complaints from companies when they need people that really understand the medium from both the technological and social side. When you look at university courses, web science isn't there - it seems to fall through the cracks. So we'd like to put it on the curriculum so that there are a lot more people who understand this."
Douglas David, a psychology professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, suggests that the internet will prove to be the innovative tool that reverses the societal damage inflicted by the rise of the automobile. David suggests:
"The car helped create a segmented society by making it far easier for families to live in different parts of the country. Now, the Internet may bring them closer".
Hopefully, Sir Tim's Web Science Research Initiative will provide the evidence that this positive, but unfounded, outlook needs.
