Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the World Wide Web, on the initiative to create a discipline (or inter-discipline) to examine the the social aspect of the Web and the Web’s impact on society. A kind of new “Web (Social) Science”. See Berners-Lee, universities launch ‘Web science’ initiative – Internet – News – ZDNet Asia.
As an aside, Tim Berners-Lee provides an interesting example of the integration of religious stories and cyberspace. In his book describing the origin of the web and its possible future, Berners-Lee connects Unitarian Universalism with how he thinks the web should function. Unitarian Universalism’s pragmatic appropriation of features from various religions and philosophies serves, he argues, as a useful metaphor for the World Wide Web. Provided one maintains mutual respect for each other’s traditions and beliefs, be they religious or technological, then the web will function harmoniously.
(See: Tim Berners-Lee and Mark Fischetti, Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 207-09.)
Robin Edgar
Well quite evidently Unitarian*Universalists do a very poor job of maintaining mutual respect for other religious traditions and beliefs so the inter-connected web functions far from harmoniously when it comes to U*Us. . .