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        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Computer
        
(Message started by: amichail on Aug 23rd, 2007, 1:31pm)
Title: Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Computer
Post by amichail on Aug 23rd, 2007, 1:31pm
What do you think of this?

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/ShneidermanCACM6-2007.pdf

In particular:

"The social perspective pushes Web science researchers toward a deep understanding of the information and services users want. The disruptive shift involves moving away from studying the technology toward studying what users can do with the technology [7]. While computer scientists have found Moore’s Law to be a helpful measure of progress, Web scientists are more interested in counting page views and unique visitors. In short, the shift is from chips to clicks."
Title: Re: Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Compu
Post by Sameer on Aug 23rd, 2007, 10:25pm
Without going into the actuality of this web science, I would like to understand or look to somebody to explain why and how "moore's law" was used for measuring progress in software/UI??
Title: Re: Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Compu
Post by amichail on Aug 24th, 2007, 4:33am
Also see this discussion:

http://weblog.fortnow.com/2007/08/impact-of-facebook-platform-on-cs.html
Title: Re: Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Compu
Post by towr on Aug 25th, 2007, 4:58am
"Web science" sounds a lot like marketing.. And maybe a bit like sociology.
It doesn't seem very aptly named to me.
Title: Re: Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Compu
Post by amichail on Aug 25th, 2007, 7:26am

on 08/25/07 at 04:58:28, towr wrote:
"Web science" sounds a lot like marketing.. And maybe a bit like sociology.
It doesn't seem very aptly named to me.

I think it's a lot like psychology and sociology.  It can give you advice on the sort of web services to build and the sort of features that can maximize click rate for those web services.

Such a field can be more important than CS (with its focus on implementation) in an environment like Facebook.  The bottleneck here often has nothing to do with implementation.  Rather, it is knowing how Facebook users think and the sorts of things they will like.
Title: Re: Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Compu
Post by towr on Aug 25th, 2007, 7:47am

on 08/25/07 at 07:26:52, amichail wrote:
Such a field can be more important than CS (with its focus on implementation) in an environment like Facebook.  The bottleneck here often has nothing to do with implementation.  Rather, it is knowing how Facebook users think and the sorts of things they will like.
That's marketing, and not really science, though. (Not that there's anything wrong with a little marketing; giving people what they want, or making them want what you have, has its place in the world, I'm sure. But there's a bit too much focus on it these days imo.)
I suppose calling it "web science" is just another example of marketing in itself.
Title: Re: Web Science: A Provocative Invitation to Compu
Post by amichail on Aug 25th, 2007, 7:55am

on 08/25/07 at 07:47:07, towr wrote:
That's marketing, and not really science, though. (Not that there's anything wrong with a little marketing; giving people what they want, or making them want what you have, has its place in the world, I'm sure. But there's a bit too much focus on it these days imo.)
I suppose calling it "web science" is just another example of marketing in itself.

Calling it a science may increase the chances that the CS community will include it among their subfields.

It is a science in the sense that you can carry out scientific experiments to discover guidelines for maximize clicks in various contexts.


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