OU Professor of Computer Science is helping shape the future internet

With two billion people online, the internet today is an essential infrastructure which underpins the economy and society - but it was designed in the 1970s for purposes which bear little resemblence to those of today.

John Domingue, Professor of Computer Science with The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute, delivered an inaugural lecture at the OU's HQ in Milton Keynes in which he stressed the social and communicative power of the internet - so much so that governments have sought to shut it down - and an overview of the reasearch he's been leading to define the future of the internet, the semantic web.

He told the audience in the Berrill Lecture Theatre that there is a huge amount of data available online - expected to reach 767 exabytes by 2014, which is the equivalent of 32 million people continuously streaming Avatar in 3D. But the mismatches between original design goals and the way the internet is currently being used could hamper it's potential.

Professor Domingue's research is focused on semantic web services, helping the future development of the internet to sustain the networked society of tomorrow.

John describes his work as the "magic mirror" inbetween the user needs and the information discovery, helping to match the two. The main problem? Ambiguity in meaning, he says. When you search for Paris do you mean the French city, the socialite, the Star Trek character, the James Bond character, the song, the astroid, mythical character or plant?

And herein lies the future of the internet, and the semantic web - matching needs with the relevant data and distinguishing meaning along the way, using the magic mirror, or more formel term - service brokering.

But writing good software is a slow process. It's easy to write code, he says, but to write code that works, with no bugs, you could only write around 10 lines of code per day. Lots of code is needed everywhere, for example, did you know a car has two million lines of code, so would effectivley take 8,300 person years to creat? And Windows XP has 45 million lines of code which translates to 19,000 person years?

Professor Domingue's work to date has included the development of the SOA4ALL Real Estate Finder app for the iPhone and iPad which allowes users to search for properties and define their search in terms of proximity to bus stops, schools, and railway services, pulling data from mumerous sources.

With around 80 per cent of under 25s having some sort of online connection while they're watching TV, "social connections through the TV is part of the future internet landscape, says John. "We're contributing to the software layer of the future internet and the goal is to create a future internet specific to the needs of the people using it."

Watch or listen to John Domingue's inugural lecture in full here.


John Domingue is Professor of Computer Science and Deputy Director of the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi). He first came to the OU as a PhD student the 1980s studying Artificial Intelligence within the Psychology department and later moved to KMi when it was setup in 1995. His recent work has focused on the EU Future Internet Initiative, where he co-ordinates over 150 EU projects with a combined budget of over half a billion Euros aiming to develop a new global communications platform fit for Europe’s societal and economic requirements.