The Web's Awake : An Introduction to the Field of Web Science and the Concept of Web Life
معرفی کتاب «The Web's Awake : An Introduction to the Field of Web Science and the Concept of Web Life» نوشتهٔ Philip Tetlow(auth.)، منتشرشده توسط نشر John Wiley & Sons در سال 2007. این کتاب در فرمت pdf، زبان انگلیسی ارائه شده است.
CHAPTER 1
The Web and Life
The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
—Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
INTRODUCTION
In some corner of a bland, ambiguous office somewhere in the world today, there is a high likelihood that the following scenario will play out. A young and rather attractive clerk will wander over to the office's token computer technician and ask, "So ... Why do they call you a geek?" most likely as a bet from some fellow worker. Our technician will be unflustered by this question, having encountered it several times before in their unremarkable career. Nevertheless, they will still raise their head from their coffee-stained keyboard, smile and reply sincerely, "Because I talk to my computer as if it's my best friend." The clerk will never speak to the technician again.
This scene may appear to be an unrealistic and cruel caricature, but for many of those involved in the Information Technology industry it holds much truth. Scores of individuals have followed a career in computing inspired entirely by the expectation that, perhaps one day, they might be able to interact with machines as if they were alive. Whole sections of the industry openly aspire to it, with Artificial Intelligence gurus rushing from their closets to freely foretell a brave new world just over the horizon. But this world has never appeared and we are still faced with the reality of computer systems as lifeless and unnatural creations. Or are we?
A few facts are beyond question. Today, one particular example of combined computational power has emerged on a scale and power far greater than any individual or organized collective could have ever hoped to ascertain or understand in the past. This is the World Wide Web, or "Web" for short, and its unparalleled power is growing steadily by the second. Its growth is almost scary. Widespread use of the Web did not really begin until around 1995, when studies accounted for around 16 million users. By 2001 this figure had grown to over 400 million, and some estimates now predict that it should have topped 1 billion by 2005 and will surpass 2 billion by 2010—around one-third of the world's population by most common accounts. Couple the fact that the Web is well on its way to absorbing significant portions of mankind's joint knowledge with the raw processing power that is inherent to its technical infrastructure and a social machine the likes of which we have never experienced before is plain. As Gustavo Cardoso, professor of information and communication sciences at ISCTE, Lisbon, said in 1998, "We are in the presence of a new notion of space where physical and virtual influence each other, laying the ground for the emergence of new forms of socialisation, new lifestyles and new forms of social organisation." Some have even referred to the Web as a higher level of human consciousness, a post-human existence with its own independent cognitive capabilities and conscience, a "Metaman" if you will, emerging from unapparent macroevolutionary processes.
A sizable and controversial claim without a doubt. Surely no form of manmade technology could, or should, ever be considered in the same vein as life itself. Perhaps not, but there are certainly a number of apparent similarities between the type of highly complex computer systems we see today and both the development and composition of many real-world systems that natural science has chosen to classify under the heading of "life." In short, and this point is key, a number of reoccurring patterns and themes appear prevalent across both real and virtual worlds. "When a pattern recurs in different systems which bear no obvious relationship to one another, we must suspect a common causative principle, one which can be understood in the most general terms without reference to the specifics of this or that case." To take one brief example, binary characteristics linked to a significant number of macro and micro natural systems have been a matter of well-proven scientific fact for some time. In particular, they are recognized to play a key role in the state transitions surrounding many of the complex systems directly related to the idea of organism. Such characteristics are also fundamental to both macro and micro control in the digital systems world, but until relatively recently these have not been investigated under the same light as their evidently similar real-world twins. It is this duality of pervasion across real and digital worlds that makes binary systems both influential and enthralling. As a recurring theme that appears in the most unexpected of guises, there is much evidence in our Universe to point to the true power of two.
At this point in our understanding there is a need to be careful, however. It is important to emphasize the term similarity and not confuse it with the absolute understanding of proven equivalence. Even so, by indulging the creative license granted by established prior work, it should be remembered that mankind has made many great leaps by initially recognizing similarity alone. First comes imagination, inspiration, and recognition, then speculation, investigation, and ultimately proof or disproof. Some ideas are reeled into our minds wrapped up in facts, and some burst upon us naked without the slightest evidence that they could be true but with all the conviction they are. The ideas of the latter sort are the more difficult to displace. Currently, we may well be somewhere between imagination and investigation when considering ideas of life through technologies like the Web, but if one accepts this position and allows a certain level of trust in the proven research of recent decades, then at the very least a highly compelling and provocative case can be presented for others to later validate properly. Many of the observations in the pages to follow have already been substantiated, whereas others are somewhat more speculative. Nevertheless, it is hoped that where propositions are unproven, they are supported by sufficient evidence to make serious consideration at least credible, and it is in this spirit that the majority of this book is presented.
It is surely a truism to state that life has many interpretations for many good reasons. Try to encapsulate just one of these and an untold number will stand by laughing at you. In such respects, it is beyond doubt an essence—that is, an untouchable and complex collection of entangled interpretations, interactions, and dependencies across an unimaginable number of facets. But some of our latest discoveries have started to challenge many of our oldest beliefs about life. For example, today we know that life can survive in conditions far beyond those we would consider to be "normal." There are places on our planet where no light and little oxygen can be found and where temperatures can soar to levels in excess of 400°C (750°F), yet unbelievably life still thrives. These are the hydrothermal vents of the deep sea floor that teem with a fascinating array of life such as tubeworms and huge clams. Furthermore, such vents provide just one example of a seemingly intolerable habitat that life has concurred. There are many more examples, so many in fact that biology has devised a term to describe the life forms that overrun them—Extremophiles.
But such habitats do not even start to push the extremes of life as we can now perceive it. For instance, as we shall see later, more abstract interpretations of life have now been conceived that do not require even the slightest morsel of material embodiment. To be blunt, in its purest guise, life is formless. Although the human race may well be a noble illustration of its many marvels, we are but one of many millions of different occurrences of nobleness in this world. For reasons like this, it is difficult to produce a condensed, coherent, and flowing description of life, or any matter seriously associated with it. Bits of the argument simply refuse to fit into the box, flopping out over the sides at the merest hint of classification.
Although every effort has been made to string together a compelling sequence of arguments in order to associate the Web we see today with the concepts of life, any number of routes could have been taken through the various discussions included, and any number of valid interpretations of life could have been given ultimate favor. Nevertheless, a primary aim of this work is to be as accurate and factual as possible in the material presented. Reading from start to finish will undoubtedly provide an erudite set of overall ideas, but the task of highlighting the most and least convincing evidence involved has been deliberately left to personal discretion. Perhaps several attempts will be needed to take in the subtle and sometimes organic associations entailed, but it is hoped that the effort involved will all be part of an enjoyable and stimulating read.
ALMOST NONE OF THIS IS NEW
Most who are even remotely familiar with the Web would concede that it is a concept inseparably linked with the modern day digital computer. Most would also acknowledge that, although such machines are becoming "cleverer" by the day, they still do not possess one ounce of the same cleverness normally associated with any living being. The two are quite different; computers just do sums while we do something else. That's the way the world goes round: Computers simply do not think! Furthermore, computer engineers are not interested in the types of "stuff" that goes on in a living mind, are they? They are off in a land of space invaders, sort algorithms and slide rules. They can't even tie their own shoelaces let alone interact and appreciate the world to a level that could tackle the subtleties of a cognitive process. After all, why should they? They are making enough progress on their own without needing to be troubled by the challenges of such problems—they have the Web to play with now.
This is a fine parody for certain, but one that is nonetheless somewhat distant from the real truth. If you look as far back in the annals of modern computing as is practical, you will soon find that most, if not all, of the great pioneers in this area were fascinated by the concepts of life and mind. John von Neumann, for instance, one of the most influential individuals in the entire history of computing, was driven by such concepts, being fascinated by the concept of self-operating machines—often referred to as automata. In 1966 he published a book entitled The Theory of Self-Replicating Automata. Ted Codd, the father of relational database technology, also published in this area with his book Cellular Automata in 1968. So the trend went on and the search for lifelike ways of computing continued. Soon a number of new ideas and a whole collection of new fields of research began to sprout. Take, for instance, the groundbreaking work by Marvin Minsky, who started the Artificial Intelligence movement, John Holland's work on classifier systems, Friedrich Hayek and Donald Hebb's inspiring research into neural networks, and last, but not least, Chris Langton's outstanding contributions that culminated in the notion of genetic algorithms and artificial life.
In fact, until the mathematician Alan Turing first conceived the very notion of a universal programmable computing machine, the word "computer" typically referred not to an inanimate object but to a live human being. It was 1936, and people with the job of computing, in modern terms, crunched numbers. Turing's design for a machine that could do such work—one capable of computing any computable problem—set the stage for the theoretical study of computation and remains a foundation for all computer science. "But he never specified what materials should be used to build it".
"Turing's conceptual machine had no electronic wires, transistors, or logic gates. Indeed he continued to imagine it as a person, one with an infinitely long piece of paper, a pencil, and a simple instruction book. His tireless computer would read a symbol, change the symbol, then move on to the next symbol, according to its programmed rules, and would keep doing so until no further rules applied. Thus the electronic computing machines made of metal and vacuum tubes that emerged in the 1940s and later evolved silicon parts may be the only `species' of nonhuman computer most people have ever encountered. But theirs is not the only form that a computer can take". Living organisms also carry out complex physical processes under the direction of digital information. Biochemical reactions and ultimately an entire organism's operation are ruled by instructions stored in its genome, encoded in sequences of nucleic acids.
"When the workings of biomolecular machines inside cells that process deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) are compared to Turing's machine, striking similarities emerge: both systems process information stored in a string of symbols taken from a fixed alphabet and both operate by moving step by step along these strings, modifying or adding symbols according to a given set of rules."
But Turing is not the only significant pioneer in computing. Many others have also contributed to important computational themes indirectly. Stuart Kauffman, Brian Arthur, and even the two great physicists Richard Feynman and Murray GellMann, hugely influenced the advances made. Therefore, hardly any of the material presented here is either novel or speculative. Rather, it is calculatingly borrowed from some of the most well established computational works of theory of the past century. The only thing that may be new, however, is the context in which it is applied, namely the Web context. All the evidence and arguments have been applied in similar contexts before, with similar problem spaces all dealing with the same core set of parameters: large-scale dynamics, complexity and adaptation, to name a few.
WHERE TO BEGIN?—WEB MISCONCEPTIONS AND FOLKLORE
Before going any further, and certainly before probing the depths of any discussion on whether the Web may be alive or not, a number of common misconceptions must be dispensed with. The Web is not, for example, the Internet, although it is closely dependent upon it. The two are sometimes perceived as synonymous, but they are not. For this reason, any use of the colloquialized term "the Net" in reference to the Web can only serve to confuse and is hence frowned upon here. The Internet is a communications network, a global framework of wires, routing devices and computers on which the Web rests, and to think of the Web just in terms of electronics and silicon would be wrong. Other terms like "Information Super Highway" may also be easily misconstrued as characterising the Web but don't really quite get there. They do not convey the truly global, pervasive nature of its vast information bank, instead perhaps conjuring up unnecessarily artificial images, heavily dependent upon silicon-laden machines. The Web is not like that, it is something quite different, as we shall see.
The Web is not as young as one might first think. Computing pioneer Vannevar Bush outlined the Web's core idea, hyperlinked pages, in 1945, making it a veritable pensioner of a concept on the timescale of modern computing. The word "hypertext" was also first coined by Ted Nelson in 1963 and can be found in print in a college newspaper article about a lecture he gave called "Computers, Creativity, and the Nature of the Written Word" in January 1965. At that time, Nelson also tried to implement a version of Bush's original vision, but had little success connecting digital bits on a useful scale. Hence his efforts were known only to an isolated group of disciples.
Few of the hackers writing the code for the emerging Web in the 1990s knew about Nelson or his hyperlinked dream machine, but it is nonetheless appropriate to give credit where credit is due.
The origins of the Web as we would recognize it today eventually materialized in 1980, when Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built a system called ENQUIRE—referring to Enquire Within Upon Everything, a book that Berners-Lee recalled from his youth. While it was rather different from the Web we see today, it contained many of the same core ideas.
It was not until March 1989, however, that Berners-Lee wrote Information Management: A Proposal, while working at CERN, which referenced ENQUIRE and described a more elaborate information management system. He published a more formal proposal for the actual World Wide Web on November 12, 1990, and implementation accordingly began on November 13, 1990 when Berners-Lee wrote the first Web page. During the Christmas holiday of that year, Berners-Lee built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the first Web browser, which was a Web editor as well, and the first Web server.
(Continues...) Excerpted from The Web's Awake by Philip D. Tetlow. Copyright © 2007 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of John Wiley & Sons.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Has The World Wide Web Evolved Into A New Life Form? The Author Of This Book, Philip Tetlow, Presents An Argument That It Indeed Has. Drawing From Theories Originating In The Natural Sciences, Mathematics, And Information Technology, The Web's Awake Explores How The Continued Growth And Increasing Complexity Of The Web Are Quickly Outstripping Our Capability To Control It. In Other Words, The Web Has Quite Literally Taken On A Life Of Its Own. The Book Examines A Number Of Emergent Characteristics And Behaviors Of The Web That Have Not Been Programmed, But Rather Have Evolved. As The Number And Strength Of These New Web Characteristics And Behaviors Continue To Increase, The Author Argues That The Web Should Be Considered A Living Organism In Its Own Right, A New Post-human Species Consisting Of A Single Member.--book Jacket. The Web And Life -- The Spectrum Of Complexity -- The Importance Of Discreteness And Symmetry In Systems -- Natural Structures For Man-made Machines-curvature In Information And Computation -- Positional Information And Scale-free Networks -- Evolution Through Engineering -- A Less-than-simple Matter Of Boundless Organics -- Emergent Intelligence And Posthuman Concepts -- The Physics Of Information And Computing -- Counter Arguments -- Objective Opinions -- Appendix A: An Outline Of The Semantic Web And Its Potential For Software Engineering -- Appendix B: Beyond The Semantic Web. Philip D. Tetlow. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.
The central thesis of The Web's Awake is that the phenomenal growth and complexity of the web is beginning to outstrip our capability to control it directly. Many have worked on the concept of emergent properties within highly complex systems, concentrating heavily on the underlying mechanics concerned. Few, however, have studied the fundamentals involved from a sociotechnical perspective. In short, the virtual anatomy of the Web remains relatively uninvestigated. The Web's Awake attempts to seriously explore this gap, citing a number of provocative, yet objective, similarities from studies relating to both real world and digital systems. It presents a collage of interlinked facts, assertions, and coincidences, which boldly point to a Web with powerful potential for life.