Numbers are limited! Please register your interest with webscience-admin + at + ecs.soton.ac.uk

2nd December, 2010, 9.30-17.30
British Library, Euston Road, London

Co-sponsored by:
The Web Science Trust
The British Library in conjunction with the exhibition Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research

Overview
The World Wide Web is the most complex piece of technology every engineered, and has transformed almost every aspect of everyday life, from science to entertainment, politics to the media, commerce to socialising, banking to espionage, administration to crime. Its basic philosophy of facilitating low-friction exchange of information has spread far beyond its origins in academic research.

Yet despite its disruptive nature, the Web remains under-theorised. In particular, little has been written about how we should understand the relation between the information space it creates, and wider society, the online and the offline. In particular, what rights and responsibilities do we bring with us to the Web? Does the Web make new moral demands of us? And how should researchers use the Web for their research?

To explore these issues, the British Library and the Web Science Trust are co-sponsoring a workshop on Ethics and the World Wide Web, featuring keynote speeches, panel discussions and debate with an invited audience of practising engineers, academic researchers and philosophers.

Questions to be explored include:

  • Does the Web as an information space need special ethical consideration?
  • How has the Web changed our moral view of ourselves?
  • How do moral norms apply to artificial agents?
  • What are our responsibilities as Web engineers and designers?
  • What are our responsibilities as website managers and content creators?
  • Does the Web assume a liberal culture with unrestricted information flow? Can it be adapted to less liberal regimes, and if so, should it?
  • What norms of behaviour does the Web depend upon?
  • Can the Web be inclusive while remaining innovative?
  • How should researchers approach open data online?
  • What is the public’s understanding of “public” on social networking sites, search facilities and other services?
  • What should researchers think about when collecting data, analysing it and disseminating their findings?
  • Is this a “golden age” of web research, relatively un-fettered by human subjects regulation?
  • How should researchers navigate the relationship between the subject of their enquiry and the commercial owners of Web services?


Confirmed speakers:
Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire/University of Oxford)
Jeroen van den Hoven (Delft University of Technology)
Kieron O’Hara (University of Southampton)

Confirmed panellists:
Martin Moore (Media Standards Trust)
Nigel Shadbolt (University of Southampton)
Yorick Wilks (Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition/University of Oxford)
David Wright (Trilateral Research)
Tom Buchanan (University of Westminster)
Natasha Whiteman (University of Leicester)

Organisers:
Aleks Krotoski, Matthew Shaw (British Library)
Kieron O’Hara (Web Science Trust)

DRAFT Agenda
9.30-10.00           Registration
10.00-10.15         Welcome
                                Richard Boulderstone (British Library)
10.15-11.00         The Web as an Ethical Space
                                Kieron O’Hara (University of Southampton)
11.00-11.30         Coffee
11.30-12.15         The Fourth Revolution
                                Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire/University of Oxford)
12.15-13.15         Panel: What Duties and Responsibilities Come With The Web?
                                Chair: Kieron O’Hara (University of Southampton)
                                Martin Moore (Media Standards Trust)
                                Nigel Shadbolt (University of Southampton/Web Science Trust)
                                Yorick Wilks (Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition)
                                David Wright (Trilateral Research)
13.15-14.15         Lunch
14.15-14.30         Introduction to Growing Knowledge: the Evolution of Research
                                Aleks Krotoski (Researcher-in-Residence, Growing Knowledge, British Library)
14.30-15.30         Panel: Using the Web as a Research Tool
Chair: Aleks Krotoski (Researcher-in-Residence, Growing Knowledge, British Library)
                                Tom Buchanan, University of Westminster; Kaitlin Thaney, Macmillan
                                Natasha Whiteman, University of Leicester
                                Panelist tbc
15.30-16.00         Tea
16.00-16.45         Morality and the Web
                                Jeroen van den Hoven (Delft University of Technology)
16.45-17.00         Close: The Need for Web Science
                                Wendy Hall (University of Southampton/Web Science Trust)
17.15-18.00         Guided Tour of the Growing Knowledge Exhibition

Numbers are limited! Please register your interest with webscience-admin + at + ecs.soton.ac.uk

Growing Knowledge: the evolution of research is an exhibition at the British Library, exploring how digital research is changing scholarship. Visitors can take part in a JISC-sponsored evaluation of new research spaces, engage with views of leading thinkers and explore new technologies, such as the Microsoft Surface.