The Continuing Metamorphosis of the Web

Presentation

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PDF (Keynote talk, April 23, Madrid, WWW2009) (2132Kb)

Abstract

The invention of HTML and HTTP catalyzed a path of enormous innovation that was hard to foresee in the early 1990’s. The Web’s continuing metamorphosis has led to fantastically increased capabilities and economic value. It has catalyzed the creation of distributed systems orders of magnitude larger than any previously built, new programming and distribution models for computer applications, great advances in the fields of information retrieval, entirely new domains for theoretical computer science, and more. This greatly enhanced web is changing the entire environment and enabling some early research promises to become a reality for most Internet users. In this presentation, I will discuss such examples, and in particular, what happens when speech, image processing, human language translation, and mobility are woven into all we do. I will also extrapolate from some current research and advanced web technologies to paint a picture of the web five-to-ten years out. This should have implications for the computer science community, as well as the vast community that is leveraging the web for ever greater goals.