WWW and the Internet - Did We Miss the Boat? (Panel)

The title of this panel alludes to the comment by David DeWitt at VLDB-95 that the database community missed its opportunity to contribute to the Internet revolution. The plan is to discuss if there was the boat to begin with, and if so, can we still jump on it. Consequently, broad questions we will try to address include: If WWW did not exist and we were just designing it now, what would we do differently? In today' s WWW, what are research areas where the database community could contribute?