What is Web science?

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Nigel Shadbolt
University of Southampton, UK

Computer scientist Nigel Shadbolt talks about creating a formal academic discipline called Web science that will help computer scientists and others understand the nexus between computing and social networks – and give market researchers the intelligence to monetize Web activities.

"Web science is the attempt to study the Web as a construct that is planetary scale. It is unique in involving hundreds of millions of computers and hundreds of millions of people. It leads to extraordinary phenomena, such as social networks, Wikipedia and collective intelligence. Essentially, Web science is about understanding the Web and anticipating how we might extend it in the future."

Download the mp3 file (8 minutes)	Download the transcript (Word Document)

Also: Listen to Is the Web here to stay? Computer scientist Wendy Hall and president of the Association for Computing Machinery talks about the need for a new academic discipline that will give computer scientists, sociologists and market researchers a look at what makes the Web -- and us -- tick.

Series producer: Barbara Finkelstein
Music: Phat n Sazzy by The Dejunair Project

Last updated on June 8, 2008