2006 – Rodney Brooks with Tim Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall, Daniel Weitzner and Nigel Shadbolt at the launch of the Web Science Research Initiative.
On 11 August 2006 the academic discipline of Web Science was born with the publication of ‘Creating a Science of the Web’ in the journal Science. The paper’s authors, Tim Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall, James Hendler, Nigel Shadbolt, and Daniel Weitzner, set out their concerns about the future of the Web, and highlighted the need to establish a clear research agenda ‘aimed at understanding the current, evolving, and potential Web’. This call to action kickstarted a programme that led to the creation of the Web Science Trust, and the development of Web Science research throughout the world.
As the Web Science community comes together at WebSci’16 (our 8th ACM conference), please download our brochure, and join us in celebrating the diversity of international multidisciplinary research that has developed over the past 10 years: A Celebration of 10 Years of the Science of the Web (5.7MB pdf).