The smart internet: transforming the web for the user

Key architectural elements of the web, namely, HTTP, URL and HTML enable a very simple user model of the web based on hyperlinks. While this model allows browser-based access to a wide array of online content and resources, the limitations in user experience provided in this interaction model are increasingly apparent. Two decades after the birth of the web, new technologies such as Rich Internet Application, AJAX, and Web 2.0 seek to improve web user interfaces, but in general their main benefit is to individual server sites. Little advancement has been made to advance the user model of the web at a macro level where the interaction is driven not by the server but by the user. This paper proposes a novel approach to scientific study of the Web (Web science) where the traditional relationship between users and servers is inverted, so that web services are configured and integrated across multiple servers/sites in order to address the needs of users. The resulting interaction paradigm is referred to here as smart interaction. The Smart interaction approach is quite different from the current hyperlink-oriented user model driven from the perspective of the server side. Smart interactions require new web infrastructure (e.g., runtime components) and new patterns of services and resource interactions and compositions. A Complementary area of research is smart services; where the focus is on abstracting these web infrastructures and service interaction patterns into appropriate web models and algorithms. The combination of smart interaction and smart services will then result in a smart internet where user experience is enhanced, and user productivity unleashed, by passing control back to users.

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