Tetherless World Constellation

Web Science Conference 2009

Web Science focuses on understanding, designing and developing the technologies and applications that make up the World Wide Web. But the WWW does not exist without the participation of people and organizations. Now that a significant proportion of everyday life is spent on-line in many countries, it makes sense for the first Web Science conference organised by the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) to be dedicated to the presentation of research into society on the Web. How do people and organisations behave on-line -- what motivates them to shop, date, make friends, learn, participate in political life or manage their health or tax on-line? Which Web-based designs will they trust? To which on-line agents will they delegate? How can the dark side of the Web -- such as cybercrime, pornography and terrorist networks -- be both understood and held in check without compromising the experience of others? What are the effects of varying characteristics of Web-based technologies -- such as security, privacy, network structure, the linking of data -- on on-line behaviour, both criminal and non-criminal? And how can the design of the Web of the future ensure that a system on which -- as Tim Berners-Lee put it -- democracy and commerce depends remains 'stable and pro-human'?

Such a challenge requires understanding of both human behaviour and technological design. So the science -- including the social science -- of the Web is a field that requires the attention of both computer scientists and social scientists. The aim of this conference is to bring these two groups together across the disciplinary divide for perhaps the first time, exploring the development of the Web across different areas of everyday life and technological development.