Ways to think about the web

Adam KilgarriffLexical Computing Ltd

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To the web on its thirteenth birthdayTeenager now, growth spurts wild and luxuriant,Your gangling form changes month on month.

Born from the womb of academe in 1994Pornography was your wetnurseGrowing you big and strongTeaching you new tricks(webcams, streaming video, cash payments)that your parents never dreamed of.

Seeing such a robust child the heavyweights moved inBanks and shops and telecoms"what share of the action can I buy?"You tolerate them-you are young, they have weight-But meet their smiling advances with a scowl.You partied as the dotcoms crash

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New life for democracy- are you aren't you?- are you aren't you?Giving voice to the millions in blogs and online voting.

Or are you a cancerSpam spammer spammingGreetings from childhood friends lost in the avalanchePhishing, viruses, TrojansAppropriating mutating multiplying.

New life or cancer? Both of courseLike nuclear physics and the Russian Revolution.More man-hours spent on online solitaire than the Panama CanalYou are huge like Exxon, Zeus and ChinaWe tremble and we lick our lips as we watch you grow.

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Teenagers and the law- well."Lurks" they say "on street corners Something Should Be Done." You smirk.You know who they are. Specially the publishers. It's fun to tease.You smell the fear whenever they walk past.Police? You'll go to Russia.

Teenagers must have independence!So Web-2.0 has arrived.Now everybody feeds you.

Adam Kilgarriff 2007

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A web of the web

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pp_for-i 2619 1.7

pornography 5 4.45

genealogy 4 3.97

browsing 4 3.73

homework 7 3.56

purpose 107 3.48

economist 6 3.17

tutorial 10 3.0

info 15 2.88

commerce 5 2.83

dissemination 4 2.82

campaigning 4 2.77

while 12 2.75

historian 11 2.74

shopping 16 2.62

websites 13 2.29

inspiration 6 2.22

communication 34 2.1

research 115 2.0

From: word sketch for Internet

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Changes

Then• Documents• Library• Passive• Information• Computer• I used to say

– The web is mostly text so we (linguists) are well-placed to study it

Now+ social media, audio, video+ phone exchange, marketplace+ Active+ Interaction+ tablet, smartphone

?

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Dick Whittington off to London where the streets are paved with gold to make his fortune

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Dick Whittington off to London where the streets are paved with gold to make his fortune

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Sergey Brin and Larry Page cruised onto the stage to the kind of roars and excitement that teenagers normally reserve for rock stars. They entered the auditorium through a rear door, leaving behind photographers, sunglasses, a pair of hired cars with drivers, and an attractive young woman who was traveling with Sergey. Dressed casually, they sat down and cracked smiles, pleased at their heroes welcome. They were near the birthplace of civilization, thousands of miles and an ocean away from the place where their work together had begun. It seemed as good a place as any for a pair of young superstars, whose shared ambition revolved around changing the world, to talk about what they had done, how they had done it, and what their dreams were for the future.

“Do you guys know the story of Google?” Page asked. “Do you want me to tell it?”

“Yes!” the crowd shouted.

David Vise, The Google Story

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Public / Private

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Public / Private• Free flow of ideas

– Creative commons– Open source– Wikipedia

Now• Who can find out what

about me– Nuanced privacy settings

• Going commercial– Do everything on our site

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Hero or Villain

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Hero or Villain

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The web and identity

• Identity theft• Multiple identities• Your juvenile past stays with– Can I leave it behind, re-start?

• Privacy– They know all about you

• Shopping banking friends job health interests where you go– Andrei Broder, Yahoo Chief Scientist

• Get used to it

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The Search Engines

• From web of documents to web of objects– People products hotels restaurants …– Find their attributes, and values

• Restaurant– Location– Food: italian

» evaluation– Ambience: middle-of-the-road music, soft lighting

» Evaluation

– Disambiguate• which John Cale?

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Search Enginesand

Global superpowers

• US– Google– Microsoft• Bing, Yahoo

• China– Beidu

• Russia– Yandex

• Europe– Exalead

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Search Engine Optimisation

• Getting to the top of the Google hits page• Brand new ecosystem• Brand new art form• Punters go to firms at top of Google hits– Businesses live or die on it

• Google adwords: similar but paid– Google: rich as Croesus

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Web as graph

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http://Memetracker.org Jure Leskovec, Lars Backstrom and Jon Kleinberg

• Memes– Richard Dawkins: like genes but culture

• One plausible meme-type– Quotations• From politicians in an election campaign (2008)

• Method– Gather all news, blogs, with time stamps– trace

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Web and artIP and ownership. Napster. Google vs Viacom. Mashups. Stelarc.

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Web, time and memory

• The past is present• Heraclitus– “No man ever steps in the same river twice”

But now we can wade downstreamI grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

– email myself, use google• Outsourcing

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Half the world’s population is under 25

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A digital nativewho still likes books and crayons

Thank you