Father of the World Wide Web to start a new science to study the internet

Where's it going, and how do we find what's out there?

3 November 2006 17:19 GMT / By Amber Maitland

The father of the World Wide Web has announced an ambitious project to study the Internet, its uses, and the way it’s growing.

The research will be collaborative at MIT and the University of Southampton, and is called the Web Science Research Initiative to understand the multiple challenges in the web’s growth.

The projects will answer questions including: “How do we access information and assess its reliability? By what means may we assure its use complies with social and legal rules? How will we preserve the web over time?”.

Tim Berners-Lee, who is the acknowledged founder of the web, said, “As the web celebrates its first decade of widespread use, we still know surprisingly little about how it evolved.

“We have only scratched the surface of what could be realised with deeper scientific investigation into its design, operation and impact on society.”

The idea is to create a forum for scientists across the world to share their ideas and research about the web, and to develop a new science altogether.