- From: Yihong Ding <ding@cs.byu.edu>
- Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:58:02 -0700
- To: semantic-web@w3.org
Dear researchers, Here is a new online article about web evolution. URLs: http://www.deg.byu.edu/ding/WebEvolution/evolution-prelude.html (prelude) http://www.deg.byu.edu/ding/WebEvolution/evolution-review.html (part 1) As we know, World Wide Web evolves. Especailly in recent years when the research of Semantic Web moves fast forward, the emergence of Web 2.0 brings a new hype of new-generation web applications. But what is behind all of these phenomena? This article is an attempt to explain them and from which we can predict the future evolution of the web. In this article, I try to make an analogy between web evolution and the growing up of human generations. In fact, these two evolutionary orbits are amazingly similar to each other. By this analogy, we can successfully explain many of current detates. Such as, why Web 2.0 is a revolutionary new stage rather than a simple jargon, and why it is inappropriate to name Semantic Web as Web 3.0. Then based on these explanations, we can watch clearly how the web evolves forward. In the meantime, I want to particular denote this article to the <a href="http://www.webscience.org/">initiative of Web Science</a>. I believe that this initiative is a landmark: World Wide Web has been an objective existence that is independent to the human society. World Wide Web has its intrinsic laws (which are focuses of Web Science research) that controls its evolution. Although we may think that humans control all these processes, indeed we do not, however. We humans invent the web and build the web. But after the web is built, it becomes an objective existence. More importantly, this existence has become so powerful and influential that it contains its own laws. This is what the initiative of Web Science tells us. As its result, we researchers need to be aware that our duties are starting to be changed. Previously, the majority of our duty is to create rules to make the web work. With the mature of WWW, more and more duties of web research are going to become discovering the intrinsic laws on the web and how these pseudo-natural laws may guide us effectively consume web resources. As an interesting observation, the Web 2.0 practices tell us that the web is self-growing when we consume its resources. The reason is that the process of consuming web resources is a process of producing new web resources. This observation leads to a certain conclusion: unless we stop using the web, we cannot stop the evolution of the web; and this process of web evolution is not controlled by any small group of people but by the entire human behavoirs. Therefore, the web evolution itself becomes a natural process, or at least it is pseduo-natural since humans need to participate. "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." (quoted from Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:9-10) The web is a clone of our society. From its beginning, people use it as an extension of our life. On the web we clone ourselves, not physically but virtually. We leave all information about ourselves on the web, what we believe, what we care of, what we are interested in, what we are living with, who we love, and who we dislike. Web records everything, through which it can rebuild us by our knowledge, our interest, our friendship, and everything else except physically cloning us. It is true that the current web has not been so powerful yet. But it is the future. And this article is discussing this future. This article is planned to contain three parts: past and present of WWW, future in dream, and inventing the future. Currently, I have finished the first draft of Part 1. Part 2 and Part 3 will be online soon. Sincerely I welcome any comments, critiques and discussion about this issue. For comments, critiques and discussion, please drop me an email to "ding@cs.byu.edu" (Web 1.0 method) or leave your comment on my blog at "http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/" (Web 2.0 method). URLs: http://www.deg.byu.edu/ding/WebEvolution/evolution-prelude.html (prelude) http://www.deg.byu.edu/ding/WebEvolution/evolution-review.html (part 1) Thank you very much for reading this post and reading my article. sincerely, Yihong Ding =================================== Department of Computer Science Brigham Young University Web 1.0: http://www.deg.byu.edu/ding/ Web 2.0: http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/
Received on Monday, 22 January 2007 03:25:29 UTC