Forthcoming book: The Metaweb: The Next Level of the Internet

In Q3 2023, Taylor & Francis is publishing Bridgit DAO's book "The Metaweb: The Next Level of the Internet." The book is highly aligned with the NGI program.

All: I am looking for reviewer for the book. Please message me if you are interested.

NGI Program: I am wondering who I might speak with about how the NGI could support or partner on this initiative. I can provide access to the review copy if that is helpful. At the very least, a review of the book from the Next Generation Internet program would be very helpful. We are also looking for someone of note to do a foreword in case you may have some ideas.

Early reviews are very promising, for example:

“This book contains a rich history and pathology of today’s Web. Moreover, it introduces the reader to its future: the Metaweb, a multi-layer extension that builds on underexplored features of the current Web and creates a hyper-dimensional space to share information and collaborate. The Metaweb proposal is both inspiring and realistic. It presents a feasible solution to problems of the digital age. Also, it provides clear directions for creating a better future, one that enables people to address challenges by employing next level collective intelligence. I highly recommend this book to researchers working on the crossroads of cognition, communication, argumentation, and AI.”---Jean Wagemans, Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, University of Amsterdam

“Historically, a book's table of contents is one kind of metadata about what's in this book; that book's index - if it has one - is a topic-centric view into that book. In the 1990's topic maps were invented as a means to provide a digital topic-centric index into the GNU documents; topic maps lie above the information itself, and provide a kind of roadmap through the mapped information territory. Danny Hillis founded Metaweb Technologies which produced Freebase, a kind of online topic map, which was later purchased by Google. The notion of a metaweb is not new. But, it's a powerful concept with a future. The Metaweb Book is an aspirational but comprehensive journey through what this idea of organizing metadata about information on the Web can look like and how we can move forward.The book describes the Overweb pattern which builds on pioneering technologies like topic maps and the semantic web, bringing to the foreground emphasis on safety, security, privacy, and governance. Do we need such improvements? The book persuasively argues they are needed. Given the emphasis on social needs in a technological world, the book provides a solid response to the late Douglas Engelbart's quest for the co-evolution of social and technological systems in the face of ever more complex and urgent global issues.”—Jack Park, cofounder of Topic Quests

“This is a valuable and readable guide to a new world as it is developing—a world beyond the present-day internet web, where the control of knowledge and its cross-referencing is put in the collective hands of users, thus escaping the channeling and exploitation of the present-day web for the benefit of BigTech financial interests. Alongside a detailed critique of the present-day web, the book includes discussion of the principles behind and features of the emergent metaweb, and the advances in collective thinking and communication it makes possible. Social scientists will find the book a useful guide for thinking and research about the new social worlds of the metaweb.”—Robin Room, renowned sociologist focusing on alcohol and drug research.