MIT’s New “Web Science” Major
What happens when you take the “science” or “engineering” out of Computer Science and add in a few warm fuzzies? You get MIT’s new joint program in Web Science with the University of Southampton, Britain.
According to the New York Times, the program is all about what people do with computers:
“The Web isn’t about what you can do with computers,” Mr. Berners-Lee said. “It’s people and, yes, they are connected by computers. But computer science, as the study of what happens in a computer, doesn’t tell you about what happens on the Web.”
As Threadwatch points out, no one is going to respect this useless major. For example, one area of study might be a strange idea of privacy:
Privacy, for example, will be one area of research in Web science. The traditional approach to protecting privacy has been to restrict access to databases containing personal information. But so much personal information is already available on the Web, often given voluntarily on sites like MySpace and Facebook, that the old approach will not work, said Daniel J. Weitzner, technology and society director at the Web consortium.
Studying social phenomena is not science, so the major is ill-named. Also, studying how popular web sites work is not academia–it’s web surfing. If you want to understand how web or distributed systems work, you need a background in computer science and experience building them yourself, not a crappy degree from MIT. When recruiters see Web Science they should think the same thing as Did no work and partied through college.
| This entry was posted on Saturday, November 4th, 2006 at 11:41 pm and is tagged with warm fuzzies, berners lee, university of southampton, web science, program in web, social phenomena, facebook, web consortium, weitzner, strange idea, protecting privacy, privacy privacy, myspace, new york times, partied, traditional approach, technology and society, web surfing, computer science, academia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
6 Responses to “MIT’s New “Web Science” Major”
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>When recruiters see Web Science they should think the same thing as Did no work and partied through college.
Companies don’t give a **** about how much work you did in college, they care about how you can make money for their company. If you pretend your CS degree has value because most people aren’t smart enough to major in CS then the only one you’re fooling is yourself. Value comes from what you can do with the skill, not how hard the skill was to learn.
Hmm, that seems really interesting. Is there anywhere online that I could see some course descriptions?
Might be nice to actually know something other than numbers when all the CS jobs are outsourced…
Do you think Cornell’s information science program is just as “useless” and unworthy of respect?
I see….as you participate in “Web Science” by publishing an online blog containing your opinion. I’m a psych and CS major and this stuff is ripe for research, IMHO.
No Katie, I participate in “blogging” by writing in an online blog. Studying me is not a science, is not quantitative, and is entirely useless as a technical degree. Computer Science and online psychological experiments are very different and shouldn’t be mashed together under the misnomer “web blah.”
Quantitative = science? Studying social phenomena is not science? Very interesting definitions indeed. Elliot I recommend you to take a course in philosophy of science, perhaps Stanford’s major in history and philosophy of science http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/historyandscience.html? I remind you that the science part of computer science is not exactly a non-issue.