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Dr Alexiei Dingli

Introduction to Web Science

Past, Present and Future

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• 1858 – let there be transatlantic cables– But it was not right … technical failures

• 1866 – let there be transatlantic cables 2– Great success which remained in operation for 100 years

• 1957 – The USSR launched Sputnik– The first satellite

• 1958 – The US setup ARPA– Advanced Research Projects Agency

The beginning …

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• US vrs USSR • Threat of nuclear

attack• Computers strategic

• Dr Licklider chosen to improve military’s use of computer technologies

1960’s The cold war

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The idea

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• Plan:– University of California, Los Angeles hoped to log onto the Stanford

computer and try to send it the word “LOGIN”

"We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI...," "We typed the L and we asked on the phone, "Do you see the L?" "Yes, we see the L," came the response. "We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O." "Yes, we see the O." "Then we typed the G, and the system crashed"

• On the second attempt, it worked perfectly!

• The revolution had begun …

ARPANET’s first transmision …

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• Financed by Defence ARPA (DARPA)

• Made up of a few nodes initially

• 1971 first Terminal Interface Processor enable direct dial-in into the net

• 1972 first public demonstration with 24 sites (NASA, National Science Foundation, Defence, etc)

• 1973 connections with England and Norway. First satellite connection.

• 1974 62 computers online

1969 ARPANET

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The ARPANET started growing (1974)

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• 1975 opened to the public

• 1977 111 computers online

• 1983 the Department of Defence Data Network (called MILNET) split off from ARPANET

• 1985 public links existed across North America, Europe and Australia

• 1990 ARPANET retired and computers were moved to the new network, NSFNET to be known as the Internet

1975 ARPANET

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• Enormous network of computers

• E-mail

• Mailing List

• Bulletin boards

• Web pages

• Intranets

• Distribution of information, software, etc

• What else?

The Internet as we know it …

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• Proposed by Sir Tim Burners-Lee while working at CERN (Large Physics European Research Centre)

• Originally for record keeping and links

• Read – Original WWW proposal

• http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html

– WWW past, present, future • http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1996/ppf.html

World Wide Web (1)

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• CERN had an ARPANET connection via EUnet since 1990

• 1991 Tim posted a note on alt.hypertext.newsgroup about– Web server– Line browser

• Servers started appearing everywhere

• 1993 MOSAIC (first to embed images)

• 1994 W3C created (http://www.w3.org)

World Wide Web (2)

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• Hypertext– Created by Ted Nelson in the 60s– Text, Pictures, anything can be

linked– Move from one item to the other– Browser is used to

interpret hypermedia

• http://www.xanadu.com

Concept behind the WWW

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• HTML – Hypertext Mark-up Language– Derived from SGML (Standard Generalised

Mark-up Language) in the 60s

• HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol– Used to send/receive HTML pages to/from

browsers

The Language of the WWW

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• Download information (rather than going to a limited library, etc)

• Access bank account (faster, lower costs, less abuses, etc)

• Find people to provide a service (yellow pages, etc)

• Search and purchase items

• Organise holiday

• List goes on …

What can I do on the Web?

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• 19.2 Billion pages

• 1.5 Billion images

• 50 Million audio and video files

• People are simply adding more on a daily basis

• Web contains anything– Good– Bad

The Internet today

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The Internet is growing …

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• Must have a query

• Search (using bag of words!)

• Browse through data

• Filter it

• Ideally solve the problem

• But is this what users want?

How do you use the WWW?

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• I want to go on holiday, somewhere new where its not too cold. I want to visit some museums and visit a few fun parks. I’m short of money so ideally my budget should not exceed the € 1000.

• How would the current web support this query?

Query example …

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• It was thought that the next web would be the Semantic Web, instead Web 2.0 came along …

• But is it really a new Web or just hype?

Web X.0

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• No automatic processing

• No direct querying – How many students started the B.Sc course last year?

• Bag of words search– Takes time– Ineffective

• How reliable is the web? – Who wrote what and does he/she have the authority to do so?

• Is the information up to date?

Problems with the current web … (1)

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• Requires manual integration of information– How many times did you find what you were

looking for in just one page?

• Information can be dispersed, redundant, unreliable, outdated and in different formats

Problems with the current web … (2)

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Web of Tomorrow (1)

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Web of Tomorrow (2)

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• From Information to Knowledge

• Improved retrieval

• Reasoning Agents

• Will serve for both Human and Automatic consumption

• The Semantic Web– Information Integration– Multiple Searches– Words, pages vrs Information– Read the original paper

• The Semantic Web• May 2001• Scientific American Magazine• Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila

Web of Tomorrow (3)

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The entertainment system was belting out the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" when the phone rang. When Pete answered, his phone turned the sound down by sending a message to all the other local devices that had a volume control. His sister, Lucy, was on the line from the doctor's office: "Mom needs to see a specialist and then has to have a series of physical therapy sessions. Biweekly or something. I'm going to have my agent set up the appointments." Pete immediately agreed to share the chauffeuring.

SW Case Study(1)

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At the doctor's office, Lucy instructed her Semantic Web agent through her handheld Web browser. The agent promptly retrieved information about Mom's prescribed treatment from the doctor's agent, looked up several lists of providers, and checked for the ones in-plan for Mom's insurance within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent or very good on trusted rating services. It then began trying to find a match between available appointment times (supplied by the agents of individual providers through their Web sites) and Pete's and Lucy's busy schedules.

SW Case Study(2)

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In a few minutes the agent presented them with a plan. Pete didn't like it, University Hospital was all the way across town from Mom's place, and he'd be driving back in the middle of rush hour. He set his own agent to redo the search with stricter preferences about location and time. Lucy's agent, having complete trust in Pete's agent in the context of the present task, automatically assisted by supplying access certificates and shortcuts to the data it had already sorted through.

SW Case Study(3)

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Almost instantly the new plan was presented: a much closer clinic and earlier times but there were two warning notes. First, Pete would have to reschedule a couple of his less important appointments. The other was something about the insurance company's list failing to include this provider under physical therapists: "Service type and insurance plan status securely verified by other means," the agent reassured him.

SW Case Study(4)

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Lucy registered her assent at about the same moment Pete was muttering, "Spare me the details," and it was all set. (Of course, Pete couldn't resist the details and later that night had his agent explain how it had found that provider even though it wasn't on the proper list.)

SW Case Study(5)

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1. Retrieved information about Mom's prescribed treatment from the doctor's agent

2. Look up several lists of providers

3. Checked for the ones in-plan for Mom's insurance within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent or very good on trusted rating services

4. Find a match between available appointment times (supplied by the agents of individual providers through their Web sites) and Pete's and Lucy's busy schedules.

5. Share information between different agents

6. Provide alternatives and if necessary arrange for the rescheduling of plans

7. Be extra careful and reassure the human with reasonable explanations

What did the agent do?

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• Provide a web with information and meaning (semantics)

• Meaning will be encoded in the page just like HTML

• Agents can roam the web and carry out sophisticated tasks for the users

• Agents will understand complex concepts and can reason things out

Benefits of SW

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• SW does not exist• Millions of € are spent in research

worldwide yearly

• What do we need …– More ontologies to represent meaning– Semantic Web Services– Specialised agents– A lot of other things …

The road ahead …

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Questions ?