Walter Stewart introducing Web Enabled Platforms

This interview produced and directed by Christian Aubry (camera: Laurent Maisonnave) was published on Dec. 14, 2007, on Intruders TV Canada, a vlog that has been shut off as of March, 2009.

There is no doubt that the Web 2.0 paradigm is changing the way we entertain and conduct our business online. But are business and entertainment all it is about?

Last month, at the RISQ 2007 Research and Education (R&E) advanced networking conference hold in Montreal, we had the chance to hear Walter Stewart talking about NEP which stands for Network Enabled Platforms. Walter is a well-known Canadian consultant in the field of advanced networking. In particular, he is Senior advisor in intelligent infrastructure for CANARIE, the coast-to-coast next-generation R&E networking consortium.

In this interview Walter explained us how the Web 2.0 paradigm is now changing the way of doing scientific research. As for main stream Web 2.0 services, NEP is not only about technology, but mostly about data. Genomic, geological or climate science laboratories around the world are building huge collection of scientific data that they can’t — and should not — process only by themselves. Here come Web services and collaborative networks that allow scientists around the world to download them, process them, recreate experiments, mix them with their own data flows — just as we see in the public Internet nowadays.

Besides the fast scientific progress that NEP should deliver to an endangered human race, Web 2.0 applied to science will certainly benefit back to commercial Web 2.0 developers and enterprises. That’s another form of « conversation ». Furthermore, there is no doubt in our mind that other human groups of interest will benefit of the collaborative networking technologies that are raising today. Just think how they could help human rights groups or environmental groups for instance. That is… another story 🙂