Tim Berners-Lee Research Articles

Semantic Relationship Extraction and Ontology Building using Wikipedia: A Comprehensive Survey

Semantic web as a vision of Tim Berners-Lee is highly dependable upon the availability of machine readable information. Ontologies are one of the different machine readable formats that have been widely investigated. Several studies focus on how to extract concepts and semantic relations in order to build ontologies. Wikipedia is considered as one of the important knowledge sources that have been used to extract semantic relations due to its characteristics as a semi-structured knowledge source that would facilitate such a challenge. In this paper we will focus on the current state of this challenging field by discussing some of the recent studies about Wikipedia and semantic extraction and highlighting their main contributions and results.

Evolution of Autism Support and Understanding Via the World Wide Web

Internet technology has radically changed society, widely affecting communication and the availability of information. The digital age holds unique significance for autism spectrum disorder. In this article I explore the interface between autism and the World Wide Web by reviewing evolving virtual communities pioneered by individuals with autism, exploring the online growth of advocacy organizations, and considering the positive and negative consequences that arise from autism’s fledgling voices.

Social Media and Privacy

In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee, a 25-year-old engineer, was doing computer modeling for CERN, the particle-physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, and began the work that was the conception of the World Wide Web. His goal was to find a better way to organize files and link related documents on his hard drive on his computer in a “brain-like way.” 1 Hoover E. The Inventor of the World Wide Web. Available at http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20051112-internet-world-wide-web-tim-berners-lee-computer-geneva-cern-enquire-html-url-world-wide-web-consortium.shtml. Accessed February 16, 2010. Google Scholar He wanted a program that could “keep track of all the random associations one comes across in real life” 1 Hoover E. The Inventor of the World Wide Web. Available at http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20051112-internet-world-wide-web-tim-berners-lee-computer-geneva-cern-enquire-html-url-world-wide-web-consortium.shtml. Accessed February 16, 2010. Google Scholar and create a system that would facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. Although the web was conceived as a tool for researchers and academics to share information, the uses and even the focus of the web are a part of everyday life for many people. It is estimated that the web contains at least 25.21 billion pages on an estimated 110 million websites. 2 The Official Google Blog. Available at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/. Accessed January 25, 2010. Google Scholar Never before have individuals had so much information at their fingertips, and never have people had such an opportunity to share information that they would never have considered sharing with strangers before.

One size does not fit all

The web has become the largest data repository on the planet. An important factor contributing to its success is its openness and ease of use: anyone can contribute data to, and consume data from, the Web. As Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, said, "the exciting thing is serendipitous reuse of data: one person puts data up there for one thing, and another person uses it another way." Such serendipitous data reuse is extremely valuable. Through reuse, new knowledge can be created, innovation and value-added services become possible. However, there have been efforts to regulate and legally challenge data reuse activities. The European Union (EU) has adopted the Database Directive to restrict unauthorized data extraction and reuse. In the U.S., Congress has considered six bills, all of which failed to pass into law. These legislative activities are summarized in Figure 1; more details are furnished later. The significant uncertainty and the international differences in database legislation have created serious challenges to the "serendipitous reuse of data." The dual purposes of this article, both related to the theme "one size does not fit all," are to: summarize the range of legislation in current use and proposed; and present an economic model for interpreting or recommending policy choices that depend on factors such as cost of database creation and level of database differentiation. As computing professionals continue to develop technologies (such as data extraction, Web mashups, Web services, and various Semantic Web technologies) to make data reuse much easier, it is important for us to understand the legal implications when applying these technologies for data reuse purposes.

Using Microformats: Gateway to the Semantic Web

This tutorial explains and describes the use of several microformats, which make information marked up in HTML available for use in applications outside traditional Web browsers. Because microformats consist of minor additions to the HTML backbone of common Web pages, they represent a simple but significant move toward what Tim Berners-Lee has called the ldquosemantic Webrdquo-but without requiring the technical and practical shifts and time demands of a complete XML-based semantic-Web-development approach. Microformats also provide technical communicators with literacies and a conceptual foundation to approach more advanced semantic Web technologies and suggest ways to refine current Web design practice.

Online privacy and browser security

The debate around online privacy has never been more complex, or opinion more divided. Government and EU directives mean that data relating to individual web use can (and in some cases, must) be collected and stored. But there are other ways, often unseen by internet users, of profiling internet users by accessing data relating to user behaviour. This article examines the ways in which data can be stored by communications service providers, and gathered for advertising information (e.g. Phorm); and the processes by which data can be ‘leaked’ by browers to help third parties profile users. In the past year there have been a number of debates on the need for online privacy. Some commentators (Sir David Omand and Scott McNealy) have argued that privacy online must be sacrificed for progress and security whilst others insist on privacy being paramount in a free society (Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Ken Macdonald).

Interview: Tim Berners-Lee

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee wants to put the Web under the microscope, to investigate how it changes our behaviour

Renvois of the past, present and future: hyperlinks and the structuring of knowledge from the Encyclopédie to Web 2.0

This article provides a 'long history' of the renvois, an 18th century antecedent of hyperlinked text featured prominently in Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie (1791). It describes the emergence of renvois in the encyclopedias of early modern Europe, traces its expansion over the course of the 20th century through the work of such pioneers as Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson and Tim Berners-Lee, and looks forward to the potential of renvois as a key component of the semantic web and the growing use of folksonomies online. The article reveals how the use of renvois — both in the 18th century and today — leads to unsettling juxtapositions, contradictions and unexpected meanings, allowing readers to relinquish their position as passive receivers of pre-organized information, to subvert traditional knowledge structures and hierarchies, and to become active and integral participants in the production of knowledge.

Application of Social Software in Tourism Industry

Despite many controversies that arose around terms linked to the second wave in the Inter- net evolution more and more companies use social software in their web activity. Nowadays organizations from different industries apply single tools (e.g. blogs or discussion lists), build complex community portals or use already functioning ones. The paper examines premises and possibilities of business application of user-fed Web 2.0 solutions in tourism industry. Introduction: Web 2.0 in business Over the last few years a new trend in functioning and utilization of the Internet has emerged. This new trend is known as Web 2.0, what is to symbolize the second wave in the Internet evolution. The term Web 2.0 appeared for the first time in 2004 in conjunction with a confe- rence organized by O'Reilly Media 1 . It has been quite imprecise and controversial from the very beginning like the phenomenon of the second wave itself. One of its' opponents, Tim Berners-Lee claims, that cooperation and interaction, which suppose to be the hallmarks of Web 2.0, were the immanent elements of the first wave of the Internet evolution 2 . From this point of view Web 2.0 is only a marketing buzzword, a new package for an already known product. One should agree with the father of WWW up to a certain degree at which only a potential of the web is concerned. However, considering an actual realization of that potential, ena- bled by new technological developments in web structures and content creation tools, and manifesting in more and more active user attitudes, it appears that Web 2.0 differs from its' predecessor in an architectural as well as utilitarian way. According to T. O'Reilly Web 2.0 is a multidimensional concept 3 based on the perception of web as an interactive platform for providing services 4 rather than static software as it was before. Shape and configuration of those services can be dynamically changed while control over their content (data) is in hands of users. It means, that an architecture of web solutions is only outlined (often with the vital participation of advanced users) and then it emerges and evolves during development of user's activity. To the most popular Web 2.0 tools belong: community portals 5 (the most advanced and complex tools), blogs (virtual diaries, often in photo and video form), tools for immediate di- scussion and opinion exchange - internet forums (asynchronous) and chats (synchronous), wiki mechanism (supporting individual creation of sites content by their users), RSS (applied

Commentary: Web 2.0-The users take control in the age of wikis and blogs

My sons assure me that people in the know pronounce Web 2.0 as Web two point oh. I have noted numerous banner headlines that drop Web 2.0 into the title, but make no further reference to it. If you shared my ignorance you may have expected that, like any other software, you needed to upgrade to the new version to stay current. It is not like that. It is like the roaring-soaring 1920s that happens to be on my mind because I recently visited a display of art deco objects. Only in retrospect was the decade of the 1920s seen to have unique character. The description of its artifacts as art deco was only coined after the event. The Web that was brought to us in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee is now seen as Web 1.0 and the year that marked the transition to Web 2.0 is 2004. In 2004, Tim O'Reilly ran a conference titled “The Web 2.0 Conference” that became an annual series. Al Gore is among the speakers at the 2008 conference [1]. Tim O'Reilly was born in Ireland in 1954 and graduated B.A. cum laude in classics from Harvard University. He began his career writing computer manuals, and this experience led him to establish his company O'Reilly Media. O'Reilly's business experience led him to actively challenge anticompetitive practices in Web usage by dominant players, notably Amazon dot com. He is a supporter of free software and open source programs such as Moodle that is reviewed in Websites of Note in this issue. In his article “What Is Web 2.0” [2] O'Reilly asserts that the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 marked a turning point for the Web. Many people concluded that the Web was overhyped, but bubbles and consequent shakeouts are a common feature of all technological revolutions. The concept of Web 2.0 began with O'Reilly (and others that he acknowledges) noting that while the market valuations of many web-based companies had crashed, the Web was more important than ever. The companies that survived the collapse had some things in common (empowering users) that could define the concept of Web 2.0. O'Reilly offers a way of appreciating the Web 2.0 concept by examples of software progressions. The before and after examples include mp3.com to Napster, Britannica Online to Wikipedia, personal Web sites to blogging, and content management systems to wikis. O'Reilly observes [2] that the Web 2.0 meme has become so widespread that companies are now using it as a marketing buzzword, with no real understanding of just what it means. O'Reilly asserts that many buzzword-addicted startups are definitely not Web 2.0. By my understanding I would assign Web 2.0 status to Rate Your Professor, a site reviewed in the Websites of Note. Web 2.0 seems to be here to stay, whether it has value as a concept or not. When Tim Berners-Lee [3] was asked if it is fair to say “Web 1.0 is about connecting computers, while Web 2.0 is about connecting people,” Berners-Lee replied, “Totally not. Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along. And in fact, you know, this ‘Web 2.0,’ it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0.” Regardless of the suffix, teaching can never be the same now that the Web is here.

ITunes Is Pretty (Useless) When You’re Blind: Digital Design Is Triggering Disability When It Could Be a Solution

This article critically examines the promise of Internet-based digital technology to open up the world to people with disabilities, and the parallel danger that the social construction of disability in the digital environment will simply come to mirror pre-existing analogue discrimination. This paper explores how technologies and innovations designed to improve access by the disabled actually enhance access for all users. The first part of the paper focuses on ‘Web 2.0’ and digital access for people with disability, particularly those with vision impairment. The online software that drives the iPod and iPhone and exclusively delivers content to these devices is iTunes. While iTunes seems on the surface to provide enormous opportunity for the vision impaired to access a broad selection of audio content, its design actually works to inhibit access to the platform for this group. Apple promotes the use of iTunes in educational settings through the iTunes U channel, and this potentially excludes those who have difficulty with access to the technology. Critically, it is these excluded people who, potentially, could benefit the most from the new technology. We consider the difficulty experienced by users of screen readers and braille tablets in relation to iTunes and highlight the potential problems for universities who seek to utilise iTunes U. In the second part of the paper we reframe disability accessibility as a principle of universal access and design and outline how changes made to assist users with disability can enhance the learning experience of all students using the Lectopia lecture recording and distribution system as an example. The third section of the paper situates these digital developments within the continuum of disability theory deploying Finkelstein’s three stages of disability development. The focus then shifts to the potential of online virtual worlds such as Second Life to act as a place where the promise of technology to mediate for disability might be realised. Goggin and Newell suggest that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. This article argues that accessibility must be addressed through the context of design and shared open standards for digital platforms.

Semantic Web on Scope: A New Architectural Model for the Semantic Web

Problem Statement: Current web contains billions of documents and has many administrative problems and limitations; in addition to that the web content is still accessible only to humans. The solution to these problems is the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is considered to be the extension for the current web. But there are problems facing the Semantic Web now, such as there is no clear architecture for it, there are four versions created by Tim Berners-Lee, but still up to now there is no agreement for one of these visions nor is there a clear picture for the relation between different layers inside this architecture and the associated technologies. The objectives of this study were to: (i) Identify the weaknesses that existed in the previous architectures and (ii) Reach a new architecture that corrects these weaknesses. Approach: This research uses the Qualitative Analysis Approach of Taylor and Renner, presents the four versions of the Semantic Web architecture, describing the function(s) and status of each layer and associated technologies, evaluates them using Gerber evaluation method and determines other design principles needed to modify and adapt this architecture as a step toward an agreement for one Semantic Web architecture. Results: The design of a new model for the Semantic Web architecture depends on the idea of previous versions. Conclusion: As a step toward a unified architecture for the Semantic Web, our study of the Semantic Web architecture highlighted some weaknesses that existed in the previous architectures, modify, adapt and reach a new architecture that corrects these weaknesses.

Symposium 10: Challenges and Potentials for Institutional and Technological Infrastructures in Adopting Social Media

Since late 2004 where the term web 2.0 was initially coined, the concept has generated huge attention and debate. The term web 2.0 has become gradually more popular (and more obnoxious some would argue) during the period from the last months of 2005 until now. The terms have slowly pervaded academic discourse and the notion of 2.0 has also travelled to other spheres than technology and become quite widespread across a number of different and unrelated sectors. While the web 2.0 movement has certainly been fuelled by powerful forces and internet businesses, it has also had its opponents framing web 2.0 as a meaningless buzz or business term. Most noticeably Tim Berners-Lee who called it a 'piece of jargon nobody knows what means'. Still, the force and speed with which the 2.0 thinking has spread across a number of only loosely related domains signals that there is, if not a qualitative break or paradigm shift, then at least a disturbance of our regular ways of thinking about (and using) technologies for sharing, collaborating, learning and participating. These disturbances hold both challenges to, but also potentials for institutional and technological infrastructures within the domain of education. The paper will argue that there are some tensions and contradictions between on the one hand an institutional perspective, institutional technological infrastructures and then on the other hand the emerging educational and institutional interests in social media or web 2.0 'technologies'.The tensions and potentials are explored through relating the web 2.0 technologies and social media with sociological trends adopted from Castells (2001) and Wenger (2005). From this it is argued that social software, social media and web 2.0 tools and services can be seen as a materialisation and radicalisation of the sociological trends of networked individualism, the individualization of trajectories of identity and the horisontalisation of knowledge. The constant traversing of different types of networks and the sharing, copying and reuse of resources across ego-centric and object-centric social networks, which is a characteristic of web 2.0, reflects the material radicalisation of these trends. Simultaneously, the horisontalisation of knowledge as a sociological trend challenges vertical, hierarchical and institutionalised conceptions of knowledge - a pattern that seems to be further aggravated by the implicit understanding of knowledge contribution and sharing within a web 2.0 context which runs counter to institutional views of what constitute valid knowledge contributions From the perspective of technological infrastructures, an incorporation of web 2.0 and social software is not only a matter of adopting new technologies, but equally concerns the interaction between, technological, pedagogical and organisational understandings of practice and knowledge. Due to the tensions and contradictions between institutions and web 2.0 practices, the paper argues that the 'interface'between institutions, teachers and students in form of the networks, the nature of shared content and the management of identity need to be carefully negotiated in adopting web 2.0 technologies and social software as part of institutional technological infrastructures. This paper would also suggest that these tensions and contradictions cannot really be resolved in advance, but are tensions and contradictions that must be dynamically negotiated as part of the ongoing pedagogical, organisational and technological practices which form the components of institutional technological infrastructures.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Logic Programming and the Web

The World Wide Web is nowadays the most famous and widespread information system. Its success is witnessed by its enormous size and rate of growth: however, the same success of the Web has brought to a situation where more sophisticated techniques are urgently needed to properly handle this mass of information. In this sense, the more ambitious plan for an evolution of a Web is the so called Semantic Web, envisioned by the inventor of the Web itself, Tim Berners-Lee. In this architectural vision, there is the need for further layers of semantics, properly enriching the data that now overflow the classic Web: ontologies, rules, logic, proofs, trust are all ingredients of this ambitious picture. Given these premises, it should not come as a surprise the fact that this evolution is bringing the Web closer and closer to another field, that since quite some time has been facing similar problems of logical organization of knowledge: logic programming. Early examples, like the Metalog system in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), had shown that connecting logic programming and the Semantic Web was quite a natural and fruitful step: and in fact, the burst of research in Semantic Web developments has eventually started to touch, connect and reinterprete many topics that were and are mainstream of the logic programming area. We feel this is a necessary progression, as the Semantic Web, and more generally the Web of the future, has a lot to learn from research in the logic programming area. And, conversely, in these new scenarios there are lot of new applied problems that can be challenging and rewarding from a logic programming perspective. This calls for a tighter interaction between the Web and logic programming, which was the reason to motivate this special issue as well: gathering together a selection of the best contributions that could showcase the potential of the cross-breeding.

Interview with Wendy Hall

Wendy Hall is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK, and was Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science from 2002 to 2007. Her team invented the ground-breaking Microcosm hypermedia system, which pre-dated the Web, and for which a patent was granted. Her research interests now include the development of web technologies (particularly the Semantic Web), hypermedia systems and link services, advanced knowledge technologies, digital libraries, decentralized information systems, and human computer interaction. She has published over 350 papers in areas such as hypermedia, multimedia, digital libraries, and distributed information systems. She is founding director, along with Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, and Daniel J. Weitzner, of the Web Science Research Initiative, which was launched in 2006 as a long-term research collaboration between the University of Southampton and MIT. She holds a number of prestigious leadership roles. She is currently senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and was President of the British Computer Society (2003-2004). She is a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) Council and Publications Board and also Vice-President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is a member of IW3C2 and was executive chair of the 15th International WWW conference in Edinburgh in May 2006. In April 2007 she joined the Board of the British Library.

What is missing in the semantic web cake?

Over the last three years or so, the semantic web community has been developing tools to build Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the semantic web. The idea of automatically encoding semantic information in documents has been one of the widely explored lines of research. At present, several tools are available to perform semi-automatic annotation of documents. However, we argue that it might be enough to annotate documents with semantics, which in many cases is an individual's view of the world. An extra layer is then needed to describe the user's intentions when annotating documents.

The publishing [R]evolution

Throughout history, the field of publishing has been profoundly influenced by technological advances ranging from Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee. Along the way, the term publisher has also been redefined to not only imply traditional publishers, such as Elsevier, but to additionally include governments, corporations and daily users of the internet. During the past decade, publishers have embraced the presentation neutrality of XML and the translation capabilities of XSLT to personalize a user's experience. But until now, the technology has not been available for a publisher to truly exploit database functionality for their XML content, repurpose these assets and unleash the power of XML. With the W3C XQuery 1.0 Recommendation in January 2007 and the introduction of XML Databases, the next significant technical advancement in publishing is currently underway and will forever change how XML assets are viewed, used and repurposed within the publishing industry. This paper provides some background information on these new technologies, describes how some publishers are unlocking their XML content with XQuery and XML Database technologies and presents some best practices identified through experience.

Web accessibility for individuals with cognitive deficits

Tim Berners-Lee claimed in 2001 that “the power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect”. A considerable amount of work has been done to make the web accessible to those with sensory or motor disability, with an increasing number of government and enterprise intranet webs being “accessible”, and also with some consortiums and groups seriously approaching this commitment. Some authors, such as Harrysson, have already highlighted the need for a cognitively accessible web. However, in spite of good intentions, there has been little work to date that has tackled this task. At least until now, the existing WAI and NI4 recommendations about cognitive disability are extremely difficult (if not impossible) to test, as they are only general recommendations. This article explains an alternative Web that has been constructed and tested on a sample of participants with cognitive disabilities (N = 20) with positive results encouraging us to dedicate more effort to fine tune their requirements regarding specific cognitive deficits and automating the process of creating and testing cognitively accessible web content. This alternative web implies the use of a simplified web browser and an adequate web design. Discussion of the need to have several levels of cognitive accessibility, equivalent (although not identical) content for this collective and the need for testable protocols of accessibility that support these people's needs is also included. This article finishes with conclusions about the potential impact of accessible pages in the daily life of people suffering from cognitive deficits, outlining the features to be considered within a user profile specification that support cognitive difficulties and with reflections about the suitability of Semantic Web Technologies for future developments in this field.

Complexity Theory

In popular dialogues, describing a system as "complex" is often the point of resignation, inferring that the system cannot be sufficiently described, predicted nor managed. Transport networks, management infrastructure and supply chain logistics are all often described in this way. Academic dialogues have begun to explore the collective behaviors of complex systems to define a complex system specifically as an adaptive one; i.e. a system that demonstrates 'self organising' principles and 'emergent' properties. Based upon the key principles of interaction and emergence in relation to adaptive and self organising systems in cultural artifacts and processes, this paper will argue that complex systems are cultural systems. By introducing generic principles of complex systems, and looking at the exploration of such principles in art, design and media research, this paper argues that a science of cultural systems as part of complex systems theory is the post modern science for the digital age. Furthermore, that such a science was predicated by post structuralism and has been manifest in art, design and media practice since the late 1960s.

Google and beyond: information retrieval on the World Wide Web

How do you find information on the World Wide Web? The need for tools to make locating information easier was recognized very early in the development of the Internet. In fact Archie, the program credited with being the world’s first Internet search engine, was created in 1990, a year before Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. The first website, created by Berners-Lee at http://info.cern.ch/ and made available online on 6 August 1991, was also the first web directory, as Berners-Lee kept an ever-growing, categorized list of the websites that other people created. That list became the WWW Virtual Library, a volunteer-maintained catalogue still available at http://vlib.org/.