In this chapter, the main avant-garde components that favor quality on the web are disclosed, especially from the perspectives of software and design. At the same time, the deviations of these components that slow down these processes from the technical-human point of view are presented. In this dualistic perspective, the role of education is included in each of the generations of users, programmers, and publishers of digital content on the web, as well as the context in which they are immersed. A triadic vision of past, present and future is presented in each of the aspects and components, directly and indirectly related, with the development of operations, models, and methods, which converge in obtaining a high quality of the web. Finally, parallels are drawn between the formal science professions and infinite semiosis in web engineering.
TopIntroduction
In the late 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau developed the bases for the World Wide Web in order to exchange information in the academic-scientific field (Berners-Lee, 1996; Savage, 2017; McCullough, 2018). However, very few predicted that the term web would end up being engineering. Traditionally, the word engineering denotes the action of transforming knowledge into something useful or practical (Hehn, et al., 2020; Cipolla-Ficarra, et al., 2018b). The problem is determining the purpose of that usefulness and who ends up governing or controlling it. In endless inventions it is something observed and verified historically speaking, from the industrial revolution in the 19th century to the present day, with all its effects or consequences, from the social, economic and technological perspective.
A priori, the task of web engineering experts is the use of systematic, organized and quantifiable methodologies for the efficient development of commercial or non-high quality systems or applications on the web (Bagchi, et al., 2020; Schermann, Cito & Leitner, 2018; Pressman & Lowe, 2009; Suh, 2005). Taking into account, in addition, that almost everything that is not found on the web, is practically non-existent for the digital born and online artificial intelligence.
A classic example of this last observation is the evaluations with negative results of the scientific works for the conferences, workshops, symposium, doctoral consortium, demonstrations, posters, etc., when their bibliographic references are not online. These tasks are generally carried out by individuals, whose ages range between 25/30 and 45/50 years, considering them experts in the use of new technologies, but inexperienced in consulting the archived material in real libraries.
Thus, automatically and unfairly, innovation from a huge set of theoretical investigations, results of laboratory experiments, technological prototypes for the interaction between humans and robots, etc., is discarded, because very few bother to consult paper support, in university libraries, public or private. This is a reality that is difficult to overcome in the field of scientific information, since not all human knowledge is digitized and / or has free access on the web. Here is a pending subject for human beings and eventually for artificial intelligence, since currently, people in isolation or in groups (companies, industries, schools, universities, banks, etc.) tend to carry out almost all their activities through the Web.
This new means of communication that boosts the interrelationships between humans and / or automats (Du, Liu & Hu, 2020; Sun, Staab & Kunegis, 2018) has generated, in a large part of the world population, the gradual discarding of traditional communication channels (cinema, television, press, radio, etc.) by the interactive online communication (Reeves & Nass, 1996).
Consequently, from software engineering the need to create new theoretical approaches, following a set of rules, techniques, methods, etc., was raised in a systematic and disciplined manner, although major flaws were already detected from a practical point of view. These failures are mainly due to the existing partial vision to cover the 360° required on the Internet.
The lack of imagination or creativity in the curricula of software engineering has persisted since the end of the 20th century. The same was true of engineering or computer science, systems, electronics, telecommunications, etc. The failed solution was, is and unfortunately will be, to resort to other disciplines of the factual and formal sciences.
When Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau created the World Wide Web, it was the period when computing was highly interrelated with electronics (1985-1995). Thus, the first electronic documentation systems were developed (Berners-Lee et al.,1991, Barker, 1991; Barker, 1993). Electronic books, natural language processing, databases, were areas of technological knowledge that began to exchange their knowledge. In short, there was a kind of symbiosis between computer engineering and electronic engineering. In a broader sense, software and hardware. So far a logical and practical relationship with the scientific context of that time. However, this relationship has been renewed in the last decade of the 20th century, and includes bioengineering. In other words, it goes towards life sciences or bioscience.