The Web's Awake: An Introduction to the Field of Web Science and the Concept of Web Life

The Web’s Awake......Page 4
Contents......Page 10
Foreword......Page 14
Preface......Page 16
Acknowledgments......Page 22
Prologue......Page 24
Introduction......Page 26
Almost None of This Is New......Page 28
Where to Begin? - Web Misconceptions and Folklore......Page 30
Our Understandings of the Web......Page 32
Power of the People......Page 33
The Dark Side of the Force......Page 36
What Would a Web Be Without the Holes?......Page 37
Structure Abounds......Page 38
Four Dimensions Are Not Enough......Page 40
Life’s Playground - A Universe of Infinite Possibilities......Page 41
Enquiries into the Definition of Life......Page 44
More Contemporary Viewpoints on Life......Page 49
A Complex Web......Page 56
The Natural Mix of Order and Disorder......Page 57
Emergence - The Complexity Sweet Spot......Page 58
Mankind, Complexity, and Our Attempts to Understand the Unreal......Page 63
Could You Repeat That Please?......Page 67
Self-Similarity and Recursion......Page 69
Back to Measures of Complexity......Page 71
The Theory of Complexity......Page 73
The Crossover Between Orderly and Chaotic Systems......Page 77
Onwards to Chaos......Page 82
Modern-Day Approaches to Complexity......Page 84
Let’s Be Discrete......Page 86
A Brief Word of Warning......Page 87
Boiling the Numbers Out of Computing......Page 88
The Power of Two......Page 90
Let’s Split the Difference......Page 91
Symmetry in Systems......Page 93
Engineering Problems......Page 96
Arrows Everywhere - Graph Theory and Feynman-Like Diagrams......Page 97
Relays and Switches by Any Other Name......Page 99
Differentiation Through Divergence......Page 100
Growth Spirals, Fibonacci Progressions, and Other Sequential Patterns......Page 103
L-Systems......Page 107
Information Compression and Maximization in Biological Systems......Page 109
Degrees of Freedom and Information Representation in Biological Systems......Page 114
More Evidence of Efficiency at Play in DNA and Higher Levels of Physiology......Page 118
Books, Bytes, Computers, and Biological Systems—An Analogy......Page 121
A Right Place for Everything......Page 126
What Is Information Anyway?......Page 127
A Bow to Tie Coincidence Together......Page 131
Why Is Kevin Bacon so Important?......Page 133
Scale-Free Networks......Page 134
The Web’s Body Mass......Page 136
DNA as an Ontogenetic Database......Page 139
Back to Gödel - Compression, Keys, Catalysts, and Restrictors......Page 140
Some Key Questions Still Remain......Page 144
Memes and Universal Darwinism......Page 145
Boolean Logic, Regulatory Networks, and New Forms of Life......Page 146
Binary Biological Machines......Page 151
nK Networks......Page 153
\"X\" as a Canonical Super Pattern......Page 154
Autocatalytic Sets......Page 155
Open Worlds, Feedback, and Critical Self-Organization......Page 158
Gödel, Incompleteness, and Maintenance Through Changing Boundaries......Page 162
An Abstractionless Universe......Page 167
Self-Sustaining, Self-Organizing Systems......Page 170
Why on the Web?......Page 174
Technology Lock-In......Page 176
Swarm Behavior......Page 178
Artificial Life......Page 181
The Swarm Being that Is the Web......Page 182
The Web’s Core Memory and Its Place in Information Value......Page 184
The Apparent Failure of Artificial Intelligence......Page 187
Posthuman Philosophies and Collective Consciousness......Page 188
The Penrose Paradox......Page 190
The Attraction of “Why” and the Ubiquity of Complexity as a Metaproperty......Page 194
Spin Glass......Page 196
Quantum Comparisons......Page 197
More about Dimensions......Page 199
Strange Loops, Spin Networks, and Problems with the Web’s Constitution......Page 201
Computational Duality......Page 203
The Web’s Superposition......Page 205
Could Penrose Be Right After All?......Page 206
Quantum Brains......Page 207
One Big Spiny String Thing......Page 209
Quantum Darwinism......Page 211
Computing the Incomputable......Page 214
Observation and Practicality in Computation......Page 217
When Is a Curve not a Curve, When Is a Brain not a Brain?......Page 218
A Matter of What, not How......Page 219
Opinions of the Uber-Geeks......Page 222
Are We Right to Talk about a Global “Brain”?......Page 223
Over the Horizon......Page 226
A Final Sprinkle of Philosophy......Page 227
Semantic Web Technologies Make the Web’s Meaning Much More Specific......Page 230
Autonomic Systems and Software Engineering......Page 232
The Future of Software Engineering Lies with Discovery......Page 233
Smushing......Page 235
Runtime Autonomic Semantic Applications......Page 237
StumbleUpon......Page 238
Overlaps......Page 240
A Semantic Web Primer for Object-Oriented Software Practitioners......Page 241
References......Page 246
Index......Page 252
About the Author......Page 264