The World Wide Web is the world’s largest and most complex engineered environment. Every day billions of people across the world use the Web for their work, their personal and their social lives, while major industries rely on it for their survival.
It is the largest information system ever constructed and a social and technical phenomenon that has transformed the world and continues to change it in innovative and unexpected ways. No-one can predict exactly how the Web will change society, but in order to preserve its capacity for furthering global knowledge and communication, we need to understand its origin, evolution and growth, analyse how it is transforming society as well as how society is transforming it.
Southampton researchers are using their in-depth understanding of the Web’s technologies and social construction to lead the way in tackling the challenge to develop new forms of economic, social, political, technological and cultural resources.