RPI - Web Science ruminations

http://www.w3.org/2008/Talks/0610-rpi-tbl/

MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
Southampton University School of Electroncis and Computer Science
Web Science Research Initiative

Congratulations

To Jim Hendler
To Deb McGuiness
To RPI
To the Tetherless World Constellation

This talk

Remember back before the Web?
the fundemental change: Universality
Philosophical engineering
The Semantic Web
Web Science
Web Science challenges

Pre-Web

now difficult to explain what it was like!

Documentation systems do not work together
Attempts to unify fail from imposing too much
Difficult to explain what WWW will be like

CERN: The European Particle Physics Laboratory

CERN: Atlas Detector

Pre-web at CERN

Need to bridge

People from all over the world
Different sorts of information
Different organizations

1980: Enquire

> ENQUIRE
Enquire V 1.1

Hello!
Opening file (PSK-PCP)VAC-V1:ENQR...

PSB Vacuum Control System                    (concept)  <   O>
--- ------ ------- ------

 [ 1] described-by: Enquiry System
      An experimental system for which this is a test.

 [ 2] includes: Vacuum History System
      Records and displays slow changes in pressure.

 [ 3] includes: Vacuum equipment modules
      Perform all the hardware interface

 [ 4] includes: Control and status applications programs
      Provide operator interaction from the consoles.

 [ 5] described-by: Controle du System a Vide du Booster 11-2-80
      Operational specification of the software

 [ 6] includes: PSB Pump Surveillance System         PCP 228
      Allows rapid monitoring of pressure changes

[number      ]

Solution

Make minium requirements of adopters
Abstract space includes all conceivable systems
Universal space

1989: Web memo

Circles and arrows again...

Circles and arrows diagram

1990: WWW design

URI is global identifier, having one is good
URI schemes have different properties
- HTTP scheme allows publish and lookup
- HTTP allows many data formats
  - HTML is a language for hypertext
  - .. but links not typed.

1990: Original WWW architecture

The original architecture diagram

Universality of the Web

independence of:

Hardware platform
Software platform - OS
Application Software
Network access
Public, Group, or Personal scope
Scribbled idea to polished publication
Language and culture
Disability
Data for machines or Documents for people

Web essential: Layering

Internet designed independent of application
- Email, FTP, Web, Voice, ...
Web designed independent of application
- Browsing, shopping, participating, searching...
Foundation vs. Ceiling technologies
- Open royalty-free standards
- Clean interface makes no assumptions
- Flexibility points

1991-4: Paradigm shift

Increase of 10x every year

1994: World Wide Web Consortium

good + fair + fast

Industry and academic and public participation
Wide review
Implementation Interoperability requirements
Coordination between groups
Internationalization, Accessibility
Royalty free standards -> safe, wide adoption
Many activities, check w3.org
Join!

Leading the web to its full potential

Care and use of the WWW

URIs should be persistent - don't change them!
Make sure you site is accessable
Insist on open standards

Spirit of Web design

has been the best part

Diversity of participants
Openness
Royalty-free foundation => Wide adoption
Sense of excitement, unbounded opportunity

2006: Web Science Research Initiuative

Analysis and Synthesis
Promote Research
New curriculum

Historical Roadmap Web Science

http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0920-webhistory-tbl/

Layers: Link

link level

Layers: Net hides links

net level

Layers: Web hides computers

web level

Layers: Web hides computers

web level

Layers: Semantic Web

sem web level

Layers: Semantic Web

sem web level

Layers: Semantic Web

graph level

Layers: Semantic Web

graph2 level

Web Science

The process of designing things in a very large space

Philosophical Engineering

cf. Experimental Philosophy
Microscopic rules
Macroscopic behavior
Connection between them
Synthesis vs Analysis
Rules are social as well as technical

Designing a system...

involves social conventions too.

Microscopic system

Macroscopic effect

Analyse the result

Is this what we want?

The process of web science

Science and engineering

Magic

magic = stuff you don't understand

More magic

magic = stuff you don't understand yet process of web science

Second guessing

For example...

Email

WWW - as envisaged

WWW

Building on WWW: Google

Wiki

Blog

Semantic Web

(Oxford talk)

Challenges

Develop models which include the technology, psychology, ecomonics, etc...
The relationship between mico and macro

Challenge: New devices

Designing for the future (current!) power of hardware

Great diversity
Portable things
Pixels everywhere
Developing countries

Challenge: Collective quality asessment

New web-enable processes
Needed by W3C, wiki,
Scientific method, peer review etc

Challenge: Information Policy

Identity
Privacy
Appropriate use
Transparency
Trust models

Challenge: Collective Creativity

Creativity together
Scale-free groups
New geography-free connectivity
More intuitive interfaces
New forms of democracy for difference cases
Connection of half-formed ideas

Conclusion

The WWW is big, complex and important
We should study it
We should engineer it
We should prepare for a future we can't imagine
... yet

Thank you

The shape of the web

Society includes communities on many scales

Universal WWW must include communities on many scales

Applications connected by concepts

Its like a metro, the way the lines of common concepts
connect the stations of different applications

For example in biopax

Venn diagram showing ontologies overlapping by certain common terms

[Diagram: Joanne Luciano, Predictive Medicine Drug discovery demo using RDF, Siderian Seamark and Oracle 10g]

The Scale-free tangle

Communities will be of many sizes.
There will be very many small ones (6.10^9 of size 10^0) and a few global ones (e.g. W3C Recommendations)
Kleinberg shows that Zipf (1/f) distribution is optimal under some assumptions
Swoogle results for example (right)
We have less experience when a scale-free space is not constrained to a 2D surface.

Total Cost of Ontologies (TCO)

Assume :-) ontologies evenly spread across orders of magnitude; committee size as log(community), time as committee^2, cost shared across community.

Scale	Eg	Committee size	Cost per ontology (weeks)	My share of cost
0	Me	1	1	1
10	My team	4	16	1.6
100	Group	7	49	0.49
1000		10	100	0.10
10k	Enterprise	13	169	0.017
100k	Business area	16	256	0.0026
1M		19	361	0.00036
10M		22	484	0.000048
100M	National, State	25	625	0.000006
1G	EU, US	28	784	0.000001
10G	Planet	31	961	0.000000

Total cost of 10 ontologies: 3.2 weeks. Serious project: 30 ontologies, TCO = 10 weeks.
Lesson: Do your bit. Others will do theirs.
Thank those who do working groups!

Web science - challenges

Web Science Challenges

User interface to web of data
Policy awareness
Resilience
New devices
Collective creativity

Challenge: User Interface

Domain-specific user interfaces are blossoming... but what about generic ones?

Generality: can browse any data anywhere
Dynamically pick up from ontology: Lenses, style, forms
Independent control of: style, provenance, domains (vocabulary groups)
Explore new data dimensions
Analyse
Visualize
Blow spreadsheet tools away

Challenge: Resilience

Internet breakage: Slashdotting
Web breakage: Error 404
Phishing etc.
Spam
Wiki Spam
Awareness of possible future failue modes

Web Science attitude is necessary:

Problems combines technical and Social aspects
Problems are a function of the very large scale

Web Science: multidisciplinary

Computer science
Policy and Law
Network engineering
Economics
Social Science
Psychology
Mathematics
Media studies
etc....

Web Science Research Initiative

Getting people together
Defining research areas
Moving & funding students
Southampton ECS and MIT CSAIL
webscience.org

WSRI

Thank You

More:

WSRI: webscience.org

Thank you for your attention

http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/1018-websci-mit-tbl/