[Air-l] Web Science a Field of Study

[elw at stderr.org]

> Subject: [Air-l] Web Science a Field of Study

> Web science, the researchers say, has social and engineering dimensions. 
> It extends well beyond traditional computer science, they say, to 
> include the emerging research in social networks and the social sciences 
> that is being used to study how people behave on the Web. And Web 
> science, they add, shifts the center of gravity in engineering research 
> from how a single computer works to how huge decentralized Web systems 
> work.


I find this patently absurd.

Attempting to name something doesn't create a new field of study.

New paradigms are rooted in established fields.  Sociologists, linguists, 
information scientists, and others are all doing groundbreaking work in 
just the area that TBL is "inventing".

This looks more like an attempt to grab publicity and credibility on the 
part of TBL and MIT.  Embarassing, to be sure.

Incidentally, I don't see a whole lot of research from TBL these days, on 
*any* of the lists I participate in where people care about networks, the 
internet, or the web... or people's use of any of them.

--elijah