What Is Web Science?

Athens.
The first full day here at WebSci '09 begins with a keynote by NIgel Shadbolt, founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI). As we're in Athens, he begins by taking the historical approach: he notes that another way to describe Web science is as 'philosophical engineering', which links back ultimately to the founding fathers of philosophy, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Their pure philosophical speculation, indeed, formed the basis not only for modern philosophy, but also for modern science.

Today, then, the Web has been transformational: we need to understand it and anticipate future developments, and identify the opportunities and threats it poses. Computer science already does some of this, and Web science builds on that work; it represents the next big step in the evolution of information, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt has put it. But the diciplinary structures which support it don't exist yet, and there remains a need for advocacy in favour of Web science.

Web science, in fact, is a set of complementary disciplines; the Web is a set of simple principles that give rise to complexity, and simple micro rules give rise to complex macro phenomena. Many systems in nature work like this, so there is a need for a systems-oriented view of the Web and its ecosystem. Web science needs to be rooted firmly in the social as well as in the technical, and interestingly (and approproately) Nigel shows a diagram of Web science which places the socio-cultural field much more centrally than computer science or other engineering disciplines.

Some early work in this area, well before the formal inception of Web science itself, includes work on the structure of the Web, identifying it as a scale-free network that is governed by power laws so that the network resembles small worlds and is driven by key hubs and authorities. Web science, then, is not simply the union of all its contributing disciplines, but more than merely their intersection - the results of Web science-type studies also again apply outside of this field, much as the work of disciplines allied with but outside of Web science proper influences Web science research.

And what about the dynamics of the Web: the Web is changing faster than we may be able to observe or measure it; how do we identify such patterns and behaviours, and how do we analyse the changing patterns of the Web? Who must Web science partner with (Google, etc.?) to do any large-scale Web science; what new research alliances and new forms of direct data access is required? And in the process, how do we avoid C.P. Snow's 'two cultures' problem of sciences and humanities not speaking to one another (or today also of computer scientists and engineers not being on the same page)?

Web science must therefore involve creativity, engineering, and science; it needs to involve creative innovation, design and engineering, the social and the technical, and interpretation and analysis. Creative development and design creates applications at the micro level that may come to scale up to high levels of complexity at the macro level, spawning new challenges that must be analysed and addressed through further creative innovation, completing the cycle. This applies to the emergence of Google, to the growth of blogging, and to many other innovative developments, Nigel suggests. He also points to China as a particularly rich field of research for Web science - so much is happening there so quickly (and there is now also a local Twitter rip-off, komoo.cn.

Much of this research ultimately addresses the question of collective inteligence - for example in the context of Wikipedia. What parameters enable collaborative innovation and collective intelligence; how can it be supported and encouraged; what are the risks and problems that arise from it; who is responsible, and what legal frameworks apply to it? The Web is essentally social, and new social practices continually arise. This has implications for many other fields as well, from economics to law. Some of the research needed is outlined on the Web science wiki.

Web science, then, Nigel closes, can be described as the pursuit of philosophy by other means. The Web matters, and it is an essential part of humanity, and of our current and future economy.

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