Organised by Professor Nigel Shadbolt (University of Southampton), Professor Dame Wendy Hall (University of Southampton), Professor James Hendler (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and Professor Bill Dutton (University of Oxford).
The World Wide Web has changed almost every aspect of modern life. It touches us all. The Web's billions of pages, links and other resources comprise the largest information fabric in the history of humanity. Yet the Web is rarely approached as an object of scientific study.
What processes have driven the Web's growth, and will they persist? How does large-scale structure emerge from a simple set of protocols? How does the Web work as a socio-technical system? What drives the viral uptake of certain Web phenomena? What might fragment the Web? This interdisciplinary meeting discussed these and other issues as it presents the components of a Science of the Web.
Video recordings of many of the presentations are available below.
The proceedings of this meeting have been published in a special issue of Philosophical Transactions A.
This discussion meeting was followed by a satellite meeting, Web science: exploring the frontier.
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