The central thesis of The Web's Awake is that the phenomenal growth and complexity of the web is beginning to outstrip our capability to control it directly. Many have worked on the concept of emergent properties within highly complex systems, concentrating heavily on the underlying mechanics concerned. Few, however, have studied the fundamentals involved from a sociotechnical perspective. In short, the virtual anatomy of the Web remains relatively uninvestigated. The Web's Awake attempts to seriously explore this gap, citing a number of provocative, yet objective, similarities from studies relating to both real world and digital systems. It presents a collage of interlinked facts, assertions, and coincidences, which boldly point to a Web with powerful potential for life.

Philip Tetlow is a Senior Certified IT Architect in IBM's Global Business Services Division, a Chartered Engineer, and an Open Group Master IT Architect. He has more than twenty years of experience in the IT industry, specializing in the application of Web-based technologies, metadata, and transformation techniques on large central government systems. He is a member of the World Wide Web Consortium and was responsible for coordinating its task force on the application of the semantic Web in software engineering.