On the Meaning of the Web as an Object of Study
This is a reflective piece for the Web research community, highlighting an existential identity crisis but offering no empirical results or solutions.
The paper argues that the Web's evolution from a focused technological object into a universal digital environment has fragmented its academic community and diluted its meaning as a research domain, citing the identity crisis of major conferences. It calls for a fundamental community discussion to redefine the study of the Web.
This text advances the hypothesis that the meaning of the Web as an object of study has diluted as a clear research domain. One example of this phenomenon is the identity crisis of the Web Conference and the International Semantic Web Conference. At its root is the Web's evolution from a focused technological object into a universal digital environment, a transition whose very success has fragmented its academic community and obscured its core identity. We chart this trajectory from a well-defined object of study to a fragmented backdrop, identifying key pressures such as the "academic tragedy of the commons" and the disruptive force of AI. We conclude that a fundamental community discussion is needed to define what it means to study the Web now that it has become the universal infrastructure for global digital activity.