Research Information System
in: Mobile Web 2.0: Developing and Delivering Services to Mobile Devices, CRC Press, pp.71-94, 2010
The World Wide Web (Web) is characterized by a set of innovative and rapidly changing technologies. While the power of the Web is due in no small part to its ability to facilitate these rapid changes, a Web constantly in flux introduces problems and complexities for both users and slower-moving technologies such as hardware devices, programming paradigms, and operating systems. Nevertheless, the Web is repurposing these slower-moving technologies by becoming mobile, by becoming the platform, and by reinventing the programming paradigm. In all cases, the Web updates old tools, techniques, and technologies placing network connectivity at their heart, to build a world of remote procedure calls, representational state transfer (RESTful) interfaces, and Web-centric application programming interfaces (API). Indeed, the rush of technical innovation has happened so quickly that terms have been proposed to differentiate the original Web from its genuses; Web 2.0 is one such term.