Since its inception less than two decades ago, the World Wide Web has changed the ways we communicate, collaborate, and educate. In a very short-space of time we have come to live in a web-dependent society within a web-dependent world. There is a growing realization among many researchers that a clear research agenda aimed at understanding the current, evolving, and potential Web is needed. If we want to model the Web; if we want to understand the architectural principles that have provided for its growth; and if we want to be sure that it supports the basic social values of trustworthiness, privacy, and respect for social boundaries, then we must chart out a research agenda that targets the Web as a primary focus of attention. The Web is an engineered space created through formally specified languages and protocols. However, because humans are the creators of the content of Web pages and the links between them, their interactions form emergent patterns in the Web at a macroscopic scale. These human interactions are, in turn, governed by social conventions and laws.
Web Science embraces the study of these phenomena. The First Web Evolution Workshop (WEBEVOLVE) has been set up under the auspices of the Web Science Research Initiative, which sets out to examine the World Wide Web and offer the practical solutions needed to help guide its future use and design. By bringing together expert views on the evolution of the Web - past, present and future - the workshop aims to inform the work of the Initiative and help establish the multidisciplinary body of experts that will drive it forward.
To focus this debate, the workshop has invited researchers to present and explain their prediction of the future of the Web, to discuss how this evolution can be observed and influenced, and to reflect on why the Web has evolved to its current state. The workshop has accepted 4 full papers and 11 position papers on a diverse set of topics from Web ecology, metrics and economics to case studies in societal aspects. Some of the papers view the Web as a system, others see it through the eyes of the user; some address Semantic Web while others look at human-generated content.
We are very pleased with the response of the community to this new workshop, and the outcomes will contribute to the understanding of how we study the Web as both a technical and social phenomenon.
Program
View the workshop program.
Call for Papers
View the original call for papers.
Papers
Please see the program or the Web Science Overlay Journal for the list of viewable papers.
Proceedings
Proceedings are available from the Web Science Overlay Journal.