Internet science

Jon Postel at work in 1994

Internet science is an interdisciplinary science that examines all aspects of the co-evolution in Internet networks and society. It works in the intersection of and in the gaps among a wide range of disciplines that have had to respond to the impact of the Internet on their 'home turf' and/or offer specific conceptual or methodological contributions. These include many natural sciences (e.g., complexity science, computer science, engineering, life sciences, mathematics, physics, psychology, statistics, systems and evolutionary biology), social sciences (e.g. anthropology, economics, philosophy, sociology, and political science), humanities (e.g., art, history, linguistics, literature and history) and some existing interdisciplines that cross traditional Faculty boundaries (e.g., technology, medicine, law). Professor Noshir Contractor and others have located it at the intersection of computational social science,[1] network science, network engineering and Web science. By understanding the role of society in shaping Internet networks and being shaped by them Internet science aims to take care of the Internet in a way similar to that in which Web science aims to take care of the Web.[2] The lingua franca in this interdisciplinary area include Internet standards and associated implementation, social processes, Internet infrastructure and policy.

Many disciplines support Internet science with different analysis tools, designs, and languages. To have a productive and effective dialogue between disciplines requires incentives for cooperation. The three main elements of Internet science are: multidisciplinary convergence, observability and constructive experimentation.[3]

The European Commission funded a Network of Excellence on Internet Science (project acronym EINS Archived 2013-06-08 at the Wayback Machine) over the period December 2011-May 2015 under the FP7 funding programme. The Network in May 2015 had 48 member universities and research organisations and 180 individual affiliate researchers. Two major international Internet science conferences[4] were held in April 2013 and May 2015 together with an unconference at the University of Bologna in May 2014 and official workshops at international academic conferences such as Human Behavior and the Evolution of Society and international inter-governmental and multistakeholder conferences such as the 2013 [5] United Nations Internet Governance Forum.

  1. ^ Lazer, D.; Pentland, A.; Adamic, L.; Aral, S.; Barabasi, A. -L.; Brewer, D.; Christakis, N.; Contractor, N.; Fowler, J.; Gutmann, M.; Jebara, T.; King, G.; Macy, M.; Roy, D.; Van Alstyne, M. (2009). "SOCIAL SCIENCE: Computational Social Science". Science 323 (5915): 721–723
  2. ^ "Network Science, Web Science and Internet Science: comparing interdisciplinary areas - ePrints Soton". eprints.soton.ac.uk. doi:10.1145/2699416. S2CID 29757438. Retrieved 2015-06-02.
  3. ^ "The Network of Excellence In Internet Science".
  4. ^ "Internet Science Conference 2015 - 27-29 May, Brussels". 2nd Internet Science Conference. Retrieved 2015-06-02.
  5. ^ "From Mantra to Metrics: Measuring Multi-Stakeholderism (JRA4/JRA6/SEA2 workshop) Technical standards, law-making, and other governance instruments and metrics for a measurable impact of multi-stakeholderism | Network of Excellence in InterNet Science (EINS)".