An important public symposium in the Semantic Web field was held last week in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, US), as part of the launch of a new research institute for Web Science, entitled Tetherless World Research Constellation. A number of leading figures such as Nova Spivack and Nigel Shadbolt were present, among those Tim Berners-Lee. The principal focus of Berners-Lee’s keynote speech was his future vision of the Web, for which he discussed a number of distinct aspects. Berners-Lee has never faltered to advocate his future Web vision as a semantic and social one. The formal scientific analysis of such outlooks has emerged as the field of Web Science, to which the new research centre is dedicated. The characteristics of the evolving Web which Berners-Lee outlined could be divided into various areas. One of the topics, which was also one of the general themes of the day, was the construction of more intelligent data, as opposed to smarter software. This is one of the objectives of the Semantic Web, which was introduced by Berners-Lee, however, adding that the conceptual links between data have the power to be used in unpredictable and novel ways. It has not yet emerged what the outcome of such opportunities will be, but the evolution of the Web is likely to have an impact on the traditional methods of constructing social systems. This was another one of the topics elaborated by Berners-Lee and other attendees.

The Web has spawned new social systems which have initiated new possibilities for viewing science and other political systems such as democracy. It is evident that with the advent of the Social Web, that networks can influence collective thinking, ideas or movements, which may be constructive but also destructive. The effect of such systems will be witnessed in the future.

 A further topic discussed was the requirement for existing technology to be able to cope with and complement the future form of the Web. If data and the concepts contained in data are interlinked, there arises a requirement for technologies to adapt to this data through more pages, higher bandwidth, and mobile devices. The filtration of the Web into daily life is an ongoing theme, which has previously been discussed by many of the leading researchers in the Semantic Web domain, which advocate and emphasize the role of the mobile Web. For example, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker. 

 http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/06/11/ap5106902.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2319807,00.asp

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