I’m at the Royal Society in London this morning as an invited guest of The Web Science Trust for a all day symposium on Profiting from The New Web.

Tim Berners-Lee spoke this morning (then dashed out, did not have a chance to speak with him, but I am ok with that – next time, we’ll speak) about the study of Web Science, and the growth of the Internet (that he helped invent) has grown so pervasive that we need to stand back about the implications of it’s growth and governance.

In particular, when Tim Berners-Lee spoke about privacy and the belief of the W3C, that data should not be locked down, but the use of open data needs to be contextual, I saw a new industry materializing in my mind, before me. While Tim posed questions, concerns and problems of the proper use of data I saw solutions, however imperfect they may initially turn out to be.

For example, technology I mention in my book, semantic analysis, highly tuned machine learning topic based categorization rules is capable, today, is possible, that can determine whether a piece of information picked off the web can be used, and for what.

As far as the panel on the intelligent use of open data, I feel what the Brits are debating about we, in the United States, and particularly in New York, have a head start on (about 18 months, if I had to guess).

Also, the use of the term “WebScience” is very interesting to me, and the foundation of this conference today. I feel what Tim Berners-Lee is really saying is we need to formally study the effects of the growth of the Internet, to step back and think, perhaps as a social scientist, estimate and map the changes with an eye on implications of the growth.

I will post more about the conference today, and also follow tweets at #newweb.