Date: 2003-02-25 Category: Events
Tuesday 25th February 2003 2pm-3pmMaking Links: A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Web
The advent of the World Wide Web has changed forever the way we interact with information. In a few short years it has
become normal to expect instant access to information about any subject at the click of a button. But the WWW grew out of the world of
hypermedia in which information is richly interlinked and this powerful means of navigating through information has been largely lost as
the Web has developed. Search engines are the dominant means of finding information, but everyone is aware of their limitations. We are
information rich but knowledge poor and it is this that inhibits the development of more powerful navigation methods. The semantic web is
now on the horizon. This will enable us to build environments which provide users with highly personalized and adaptive global
information spaces. We can envisage a world where we get the information that we want when, where and how we want it, but can it really
ever be that simple? Wendy Hall is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and Head of the Department of Electronics and Computer Science. Her research interests include web technologies, hypermedia, and knowledge management. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and President-elect of the British Computer Society. She is a director of Active Navigation Ltd.
Video footage of entire event available in Business Club members section
