THE EVOLVING WEB
The Web changes rapidly and has the potential to serve as a conduit for tremendous computing power from almost anywhere. We discussed this vision of the Web as a ubiquitous computer
in the September 2009 issue of this magazine.1 As depicted in Figure 1, the Web is evolving from an interconnection of static information sources to a programmable interconnection of static and dynamic information, people, communities, things, and—eventually— planets. This evolution is a testament to the amount of research focus the Web has received over the past two decades and will continue to receive.