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Tech Valley News
RPI Launches New Web Research Center
Learn more at Tetherless World Constellation
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has launched its new Internet research center.
The Tetherless World Constellation addresses the emerging area of “Web Science,” focusing on the World Wide Web and its future use.
Faculty in the constellation explore the research and engineering principles that underlie the Web, enhance the Web’s reach beyond the desktop and laptop computer, and develop new technologies and languages to expand the capabilities of the Web.
The center will use powerful scientific and mathematical techniques to explore the modeling of the Web from network- and information-centric views.
It aims to make the next generation Web natural to use while responsive to a growing variety of policy and social needs. The World Wide Web changed the ways people work, play, communicate, collaborate, and educate. But without new research aimed at understanding the current, evolving and potential Web, there may be missed or delayed opportunities for new and revolutionary capabilities.
Specific topics addressed in the constellation include:
- Semantic Web technology
- Knowledge provenance and explanation
- Privacy, policy, and workflow transparency
- Tetherless and mobile Web access
- Trust, social networking and collaboration technologies for the Web
- Network-centric concepts for the defense, industrial and Intelligence sectors
- Cyber-infrastructure in general with initial focus on eScience cyberinfrastructure
- Ontology evolution, management and use in diverse disciplines
- Ethical, policy and social aspects of Web use and usability
“The Tetherless World Constellation is an array of stars who will guide research at the forefront of this emerging discipline,” said Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson. “We have recruited two shining stars in their field.”
Researchers James Hendler and Deborah McGuinness will lead Tetherless.
McGuinness is one of the creators of the OWL Web Ontology Language – the Web language that is said to be ushering in the next generation of the World Wide Web.
Hendler, senior constellation professor at Rensselaer in the departments of Computer Science and Cognitive Science, will head an effort devoted to the next generation “Semantic Web” which hopes to enable smarter Internet searches.
Semantic Web technology aims to understand the meaning of what is typed into a search box.
"If we want to model the Web, if we want to understand the architectural principles that have provided for its growth, and if we want to be sure that it supports the basic social values of trustworthiness, personal control over information, and respect for social boundaries, then we must pursue a research agenda that targets the Web and its use as a primary focus of attention," Hendler said.
Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered the keynote address to help celebrate the launch of the Tetherless World Constellation. Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.
"We don't understand our brains yet, just as we don't understand the Web yet," Berners-Lee said. "There is a lot of philosophy happening in Web science. We call it philosophical engineering – creating new (specifications) that have their own custom-made philosophy and microscopic rules … Our challenge is to develop models that include technology, psychology and economics."
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