Professor Dame Wendy Hall to present the future potential of WWW

Professor Dame Wendy Hall from the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science will celebrate the 125th anniversary of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) next week with a lecture on the progress of the World Wide Web and its future potential.

In a lecture entitled 'Research Sans Frontières', which Professor Hall will deliver at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London on Tuesday 6 October, she will claim that the second phase of the World Wide Web – the era of the Linked Web of Data – will have as much impact on our world as the Web had when it first emerged.

‘Nearly 20 years later, for a variety of reasons, the world is beginning to understand the value of sharing data over the internet,’ she will say. ‘It is our hypothesis that the Linked Web of Data will become the dominant data sharing and integration platform and that its effect on our world will be as profound and unexpected as the impact of the first Web.’

Professor Hall, who has published over 400 papers in areas such as hypermedia, multimedia, digital libraries, and Web technologies, will go on to describe how, in a very short space of time, we have come to live in a web-dependent society within a web-dependent world, facts which make it crucial to understand the current, evolving and potential Web. She will present the important of Web Science, which embraces the study of these phenomena and she will explore the opportunities and challenges posed by the increasing need for interdisciplinary research undertaken by international teams and the role that universities, governments and learned societies can play to facilitate such exciting and necessary developments.

‘We are now at a point when we can study the Web as both a technical and social phenomenon and we can operate an interdisciplinary research agenda which knows no international boundaries in terms of its scope,’ she will say.

The IEEE 125th Anniversary London Event will take place on Tuesday 6 October at the Royal Institution of Great Britain at 21 Albemarle Street W1S 4BS from 4-6.30pm.

IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional society with more than 375,000 members in 160 countries. Its United Kingdom/Republic of Ireland Section is the 2nd largest among 329 Sections worldwide with 11,000 members. IEEE technical interests range from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.023 8059 5453