After 10 years as the spiritual guardian of the web, what is
W3C's next role?
It is 10 years since Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, and
Michael Dertouzos, director of the Laboratory for Computer Science
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set up the World Wide Web
Consortium.
They wanted the W3C to become an open forum to promote
interoperability and to lead the web to its full potential through
the recommendation of standards.
The W3C can look back at successes that have helped to evolve the
web towards a robust, scalable and adaptive infrastructure for the
world of information.
By producing specifications as well as guidelines, the W3C has made
considerable progress towards achieving three important goals:
universal access, design of the semantic web and the deployment of
the web of trust.
All of these goals stress the fundamental point that if the web is
to realise its vision as a universal network of information
exchange, it must be guided. This is the role of the W3C - to steer
web architecture for the benefit of all.
The W3C's organisational structure ensures an integrated approach
to major issues affecting interoperability and web design.
Challenges were technological in the beginning, but have rapidly
expanded to include commercial, legal and societal
considerations.
The pervasiveness of the web means that it has evolved into more
than a tool for the dissemination and access of information. It has
become part of the information society's infrastructure and the
effect it has on people's day-to-day lives cannot be
underestimated.
Three recent initiatives illustrate new opportunities or challenges
for the web. The announcement of co-operation between the W3C and
the Open Mobile Alliance - an industry forum of mobile operators
and network suppliers - will strengthen the foundation for the
development, adoption and standardisation of features and functions
that will allow mobile devices to smoothly connect to the
web.
This highlights the potential outreach of the web to connect
billions of mobile devices available around the world.
Second, the W3C is organising a workshop to assess how semantic web
technologies and domain-specific standards can help manage the
complexity of modern life sciences research, enable understanding
of disease and accelerate the development of new therapies.
This illustrates how the web can help communities share their
knowledge to the benefit of all. Although this was the original
goal when the web was invented at Cern, lessons learned during the
past 10 years call for the emergence of the semantic web for the
web to fulfil its promise.
Third, the XML activity at the W3C has been rechartered. XML was
introduced in 1998 when it was first recommended by a working group
called SGML and the Web. The original intent was to enrich the
expressiveness of the web language (then HTML) and to build on the
experience of SGML, a language designed to represent complex
documents.
XML has now become the core technology for data exchanges within
and between organisations. Although the web was originally
conceived as a tool for the general public, it has also become
essential for the corporate world through the deployment of
XML-based applications.
These three recent examples of different and complementary
initiatives illustrate how the W3C continues to march towards its
vision by taking the steps that are needed at each moment.
Using its unique approach, which associates the dedication of its
worldwide team, the contribution of hundreds of member
organisations and the involvement of the general public, the W3C
will continue to build the web of tomorrow that we all need.
Jean-Francois Abramatic isa member of the W3C advisory board
and chief product officer at ilog
The work of the World Wide Web Consortium
- The W3C organises the work needed to develop or evolve web
technology into activities grouped into four domains:
- The architecture domain focuses on improving the stability of
the existing platform with ongoing work on XML, web services and
internationalisation. This also includes interoperability between
worldwide applications and extending their capabilities.
- The interaction domain's mission is to adapt current
technologies to enable web access for anyone, anywhere, anytime,
via any device.
- The technology and society domain's goal is to augment the
existing web infrastructure with building blocks that help to
address critical public policy questions such as privacy, security
and intellectual property.
- The web accessibility initiative, working with organisations
around the world, pursues accessibility of the web through
technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research
and development.