The Knowledge Web Meets Big Scholars

Human is the only species on earth that has mastered the technologies in writing and printing to capture ephemeral thoughts and scientific discoveries. The capabilities to pass along knowledge, not only geographically but also generationally, have formed the bedrock of our civilizations. We are in the midst of a silent revolution driven by the technological advancements: no longer are computers just a fixture of our physical world but have they been so deeply woven into our daily routines that they are now occupying the center of our lives. No where are the phenomena more prominent than our reliance on the World Wide Web. More and more often, the web has become the primary source of fresh information and knowledge. In addition to general consumption, the availability of large amount of contents and behavioral data has also instigated new interdisciplinary research activities in the areas of information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning, behavioral studies, social computing and data mining. This talk will use web search as an example to demonstrate how these new research activities and technologies have help the web evolve from a collection of documents to becoming the largest knowledge base in our history. During this evolution, the web is transformed from merely reacting to our needs to a living entity that can anticipate and push timely information to wherever and whenever we need it. How the scholarly activities and communications can be impacted will also be illustrated and elaborated, and some observations derived from a web scale data set, newly release to the public, will also be shared.