The Dynamic Web - Kioskea

Miss Yihong Ding

Filed under : Kioskea - Tribune >> Web >> World Wide Web >> The Dynamic Web Key words : web , dynamic , static , web 2.0 , world wide web , The Dynamic Web 31 Jan, 2008 09:32 am

Is the World Wide Web a collection of static artifacts, or is it a society of dynamic, independently existing programs? In the static Web, data are dominating while services and links are supporting. In the dynamic Web, services and links are the backbone while data are expressing. A closer look at these characteristics reveals that the Web is indeed evolving into a dynamic society.

Is the World Wide Web a collection of static artifacts, or is it a society of dynamic, independently existing programs? In the static Web, data are dominating while services and links are supporting. In the dynamic Web, services and links are the backbone while data are expressing. A closer look at these characteristics reveals that the Web is indeed evolving into a dynamic society.

To understand the distinction, let’s look at the difference between creating a Web 1.0 homepage and creating a Web-2.0 home-space (though Web 2.0 is still not a true dynamic Web yet). When we set up a Web 1.0-style homepage, we encode content with data and then Web functions and services, as well as Web links to support the data.

By contrast, when we set up a Web 2.0-style home-space, we often start by considering what types of services the home-space is based on and how it can provide these services, while data are flesh to the bone. The transition of this type of thinking is right now only beginning to develop, and so it is not obvious to many people. But this transition indeed points to the future of Web evolution.

The increase in dynamic Web spaces is how Web 2.0 is essentially distinct from its former generation. In short, prior to Web 2.0, Webmasters had to maintain the content of homepages by themselves. With Web 2.0, however, we have home-spaces that can self-update their content through either RSS-type feeds or blog-type reader comments.

This change shows how Web 2.0 home-spaces are able to perform independently and have the ability to communicate with others without the intervention of their human owners -- although this independence is still very much limited. Nevertheless, this phenomenon is the most fundamental component in the evolution of the Web 2.0.

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, once said that Web 2.0 was only “a piece of jargon” since it provides what was already available in Web 1.0. More specifically, Tim emphasized that if Web 2.0 connected people to the other people, it was “what the Web was supposed to be all along.” In a way, Sir Tim is right, but he’s also wrong. Certainly the Web connects people. But it is how the Web connects people that matters in Web evolution.

I like to explain the development of the Web by analogically comparing it with a child’s growth from newborn to pre-school, and so on. The traditional World Wide Web (which nowadays is often addressed as Web 1.0) can be seen as a newborn baby. When a child grows up (Web evolution), she becomes more knowledgeable on formal intelligence (goal of the Semantic Web ) and more capable on collaborative and social intelligence (goal of Web 2.0 ). These two processes progress simultaneously and cooperatively.

Similarly, we cannot overlook the distinction between Web 2.0 and the prelude to Web 2.0 by saying only that Web 1.0 has already had all the “potentials” of Web 2.0. The distinction between home-spaces in Web 2.0 and homepages in Web 1.0 is comparable to the distinction between pre-school kids and newborns.

This analogy illuminates many debatable issues in current Web research, such as why Web 2.0 indeed represents a new-generation Web instead of being dismissed as " useless jargon ." Following this analogy, we can watch a clear and convincible line of Web evolution. This is what a dynamic Web should be, and it is what the future Web is going to be.

Article originally published on: Thinking Space

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