Evolutionary thinking for the Web
Chairs' Welcome and Workshop Summary

Maria Priestley, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, mp5g15@soton.ac.uk

Timothy J. Sluckin, University of Southampton, UK, T.J.Sluckin@soton.ac.uk

Thanassis Tiropanis, University of Southampton, UK, tt2@ecs.soton.ac.uk

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402899
WebSci '20 Companion: 12th ACM Conference on Web Science, Southampton, United Kingdom, July 2020

The Web has been the subject of compelling biological metaphors that liken it to an evolving ecosystem. Analogies of this kind could benefit from further theoretical and empirical examination. Evolutionary and cognitive approaches provide not only a powerful theoretical framework to address this theme, but also a heritage of robust analytic tools that can help to quantify complex and subjective social and technological phenomena. The goal of this workshop will be to discuss how evolutionary approaches can inform our understanding of the Web at present, as well as methodological challenges and opportunities to shape its evolution into the future.

Keywords: Web technology, Web Science, cultural evolution, cognitive science

ACM Reference Format:
Maria Priestley, Thanassis Tiropanis, and Tim J. Sluckin. 2020. Evolutionary thinking for the Web: Chairs' Welcome and Workshop Summary. In 12th ACM Conference on Web Science (WebSci '20 Companion), July 6–10, 2020, Southampton, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA 1 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402899

1 INTRODUCTION

In the recent decades, evolutionary approaches have been gathering momentum across academics from a wide range of disciplines that seek to understand the emergent diversity and complexity of technologies and cultural traits. The main premise of this research is that small-scale evolutionary mechanisms operate gradually to create changes that are observable on a larger scale [4]. This thinking complements the intention of Web Science to analyse the microscopic laws that generate emergent behaviour and patterns in the Web [2].

Analogies between biological evolution and technological evolution are being used by social scientists who study digital media and software, as well as by engineers who build these systems. Similar to the role of genomes in living organisms, software encodes and transfers the information that determines how a technology functions and expresses itself [8]. There is also socially generated information, whose transmission and accumulation can be traced online in ways that surpass offline media. Current topics of interest in this area include the spread of online misinformation, cognitive biases and echo chambers [1, 7].

Insights from evolutionary and cognitive approaches hold promise for the future of machine intelligence [6] and for exploring the ongoing technological development of the Web [5]. An evolutionary view presents challenges and opportunities to engineer infrastructures that support the accumulated knowledge and interactions of humankind [3]. Data sharing is central to this process, entailing additional matters of legal and ethical best practice for the structures that evolve through human data [9].

2 WORKSHOP CONTENT

This workshop will feature an extended panel session with speakers who have been pioneering work at the intersection of evolution and the Web. The discussion will bring into conversation perspectives from evolutionary anthropology, cognitive sciences and engineering, as well as legal and ethical considerations on Web evolution.

We thank the panellists for their participation:

Alberto Acerbi, Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London
Paul Smart, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
Jim Hendler, Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Caroline Wilson, Anura Consulting Ltd,
School of Law, University of Southampton

We are grateful to the organisers of the Web Science 2020 conference for hosting this workshop.

REFERENCES

Alberto Acerbi. 2019. Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age. Oxford University Press.
Tim Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall, James Hendler, Nigel Shadbolt, and Daniel J Weitzner. 2006. Creating a Science of the Web. Science 313, 5788 (2006), 769–771.
Jim Hendler and Tim Berners-Lee. 2010. From the Semantic Web to social machines: A research challenge for AI on the World Wide Web. Artificial intelligence 174, 2 (2010), 156–161.
Alex Mesoudi. 2011. Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press.
Maria Priestley, Timothy J Sluckin, and Thanassis Tiropanis. 2020. Innovation on the Web: the end of the S-curve?Internet Histories (2020).
Paul R Smart. 2017. Machine Intelligence and the Social Web: How to Get a Cognitive Upgrade. In COGNITIVE 2017 : The Ninth International Conference on Advanced Cognitive Technologies and Applications.
Paul R Smart. 2018. Mandevillian intelligence. Synthese 195, 9 (2018), 4169–4200.
Sergi Valverde. 2016. Major transitions in information technology. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 371, 1701 (2016), 20150450.
Caroline Wilson, Thanassis Tiropanis, Anni Rowland-Campbell, and Leanne Fry. 2016. Ethical and legal support for innovation on web observatories. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Data-Driven Innovation on the Web. 1–5.

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WebSci '20 Companion, July 06–10, 2020, Southampton, United Kingdom