Bebo White, considered to be the "first American webmaster" and one of the founders of the Web engineering discipline, spoke at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media on Oct. 28, 2013, in the Freedom Forum Conference Center.
The talk, titled "Emergence of Web Science," was co-sponsored by the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, the UNC School of Information and Library Science and ibiblio.org.
For almost two decades the Web has been largely described in terms of the technologies, infrastructure, processes, and methods that define it and the applications it supports. In contrast, White will discuss the emerging discipline of Web science, which seeks to understand the phenomenon that is the Web as an independent entity and the ecology in which it exists.
Web science explores the roles and the impact that the Web has had and will continue to have in the 21st century. As a result, studies in Web science will help us to understand how the technology might evolve and how we can be prepared for the future Web.
White is a departmental associate (emeritus) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the U.S. national laboratory for high-energy physics and basic energy science at Stanford University. Working as a computational physicist, he first became involved with the emerging Web technology while on sabbatical at CERN in 1989.
Upon his return he was part of the team that established the first non-European Web site at SLAC – the fifth site in the world. Since, his academic research interests have evolved in parallel with Web technology.
In addition to his work at SLAC, he also holds faculty appointments at other institutions; is a member of the organizing committees of a number of major conferences series, including the International WWW Conference, the International Web Engineering Conference, the Web Science Conference and the IADIS Conference on Web/Internet; and is a frequent conference speaker and paper reviewer.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has selected him to be a part of their Distinguished Speaker Program. He is the author (or co-author) of nine books, and more than 100 papers and journal articles. His current research interests are Web science, social media in education, cloud computing and the Web of Things.
While at UNC, White played in a jug band with J-school senior lecturer Jock Lauterer. Jock played the hose. Bebo, a juggist, still performs, now with The Tarantulas.
For more about White, visit bebowhite.com.