THE EFFECT OF WEB PROGRAMMING ON SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION

Introduction:

The effect of web programming on scientific innovation is so enormous, both positively and negatively. But for the records, statistics and human experience show that the benefits of web programming in general on scientific innovation has been a great brainchild success and breakthrough in the history of mankind.

Most especially in this 21st Century, Technology has advanced and a lot of things in one way or the other depends on the web (internet) for one resource (data) or the other.

Beginning from the 3rd industrial revolution where productions and creativity were made possible with the use of electronics and information technology to automate production.

The web and its extravagant resources have been a great point for scientific breakthroughs…

Presently the world triples on the 4th industrial revolution characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. The 4th industrial revolution talks about fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.

This has even grown the importance of technology most especially in the aspect of the web to innovators, creators, researchers and techies (web users and builders).

Before we go in-depth to enumerate the effects of programming on scientific innovations, lets quickly look at some of the terminologies in this context as a concept.

What is Web Programming:

The phrase Web Programming consists of two great words “Web” and “Programming”.

What is programming:

Programming is the intricate art of telling a computer what to do. It is giving written instructions in a logical manner that the computer can understand. Essentially, you give the computer small steps of instructions, and the computer goes down the list, doing each one in order. Programming allows you to make new software and have the computer do new things. Programming is an act and so the act of programming results in the creation of programs like Applications, Website, Web Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Games, Web Apps, and Applets.

The Web:

Web basically comes from the phrase World Wide Web (WWW) which by any means represent an information system on the Internet which allows documents to be connected to other documents by hypertext links, enabling the user to search for information by moving from one document to another.

Web Programmers often times use the word “Web” as a short form of website which is simply a set of related web pages located under a single domain name.

Web Programming in full concept:

Web programming is writing an application or web pages that are used by a web browser like Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, UC Browser, Opera Mini. This Web Browser Interprets codes written logically by a programmer and returns a front-end view (User-friendly View). Some web programs written in back-end languages are interpreted by a web server.

We can also say that web programming is the coding up of programs that runs online and so we access them using internet data.

The good news now is that web programming can be easy and can be designed by anybody who is interested to learn and create. Some examples of popular web applications and sites include Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, Student portals, Medical Systems, Gmail, and Google Maps. You can upload and view pictures, make research, send email and lookup directions using these web applications and they are all made possible through web programming.

Now we know what the Web Programming is both as a standalone and as phrase now let’s move to the next concept; Scientific Innovation.

Web Programming Languages:

Now we know what web programming. But programming a web or anything on that runs on the computer system can be done with the use of programming languages.

Programming languages are the syntax, rules, and structures that the computer understands and can interpret or compile. Examples of this programming languages include:

1. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) — just a markup language for structuring web pages.

2. CSS (Cascading StyleSheet) — For styling and beautifying a web page.

3. JavaScript — For making a web app or site interactive an dynamic.

4. PHP — For programming the logical aspect of the web app, backend like contact form, chatting app, database etc.

5. Python — Also a backend language and General-Purpose programming language.

6. MySql — For database management.

Others include: Ruby, Java, C++, C#, Scala, R, Nodejs, Asp.Net etc.

What is Scientific Innovation:

The above phrase Scientific Innovation is talking about “Science” and “Innovation”.

Science, the systematic approach of knowing something, understanding a truth, coming up with an idea and solving a program. All most follow a disciplined method. We say something is scientific when that thing has to do with science. More or like in accord with procedures, methods, conduct associated with science.

Innovation, on the other hand, is the process of bringing to existence something new. An innovation in this our present era has gone beyond bringing to existence but also involves filtering an idea that’s different from the existing creations. This term is mostly used in the science and technology industry in the modern era. Now haven known all these, what is Scientific Innovation?

We, therefore, go ahead to say that Scientific Innovation is the Creation of Science related Ideas, Solutions, Products, Technologies that help to solve the pressing problem in the society. Since the world is mostly driven by the science of things around us, it is on new fact that innovators who think outside the bus and lives among us go along way to building unimaginable things that revolutionize the world we live today and yet more I still yet to come.

We took our time to explain the various terminologies that are involved in this context for clarity sake in other to focus on the main context.

Positive Effects of Web Programming on Scientific Innovation

We talk about the “effect” of Web Programming on Scientific Innovation; We want to discuss the result or outcome or benefits of the actions of Web Programming and its resources of Scientific Innovation. This act of Web Programming has really resulted in lots of successful achievements and sometimes failures of which lessons were learned from them.

In the area of scientific Innovation, as we previously discussed, we will be focusing more on the positive benefits than some little negative outcomes too. But web activities have a lot of positive especially in this our modern age technology (Golden age).

In no order of preference lets quickly discuss some of these effects of web programming on Science and Innovation:

1. Easy exposure to ambiguous data on the web (materials):

There way days (before the internet era) when you just needed some information so badly, maybe to tackle a school science project or assignment or maybe you needed to know how a tool or gadget made in another country can be used in your own location (country) to solve some innovative ideas but you just couldn’t lay your hands on those resources.

Back in those days’ library was one of the best options but then it was still a limited Knowledge. In some parts of the world then, Classical Information was limited to only the Rich and some Governmental bodies. But with the emergence of Web Programming, Developers (Programmer) most the web developers who are crazy enough to innovate the things perceived by people to be impossible have built lots of web kits and platform that engages people to put their contents online for instance like Blogs and sites like Wikipedia. Companies now have their information online and operate their, E-commerce sites now help to showcase products built in other countries on the internet where everybody has access to.

In the areas of science, we have lots of science site talks innovators can learn new things each day. We said New things because that’s the top edge that the web has over every other source of information. It’s always updates and valid. It’s a continuous process because of people’s constant activities on the internet.

Even, A schizophrenic patient who is unable to think (disability), can go online and read up some information to help them come up with an idea of their own.

This point can take up an entire book, for the records, let’s just say the great Google says it.

2. Networking, Collaboration, and Out Sourcing:

The networking in this context doesn’t refer to the technical part of computing, this has to do with connecting with people and growing your horizon. We have lots of sites online now that aids this goal. We can share ideas with someone in another country and easily create collaboration on work on a project together. Like the saying goes two heads are better than one, it sounds even better when we say two heads from a different phase of life are better than one.

Must of the innovations and the emerging startup these days comes from teamwork, outsourcing (connecting jobs to a competent hand on a skill from a different country).

We have a lot of web platforms programmed to bring people of like minds together for science and innovations. Some of these websites are listed below:

a. American Association for the Advancement of Science http://www.aaas.org

b. Advanced Portal for Scientific Research & Innovative Idea ScienceStage.com

c. Science Daily Covers new scientific discoveries http://sciencedaily.com

d. Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

e. For science, Medicine and Technology (STM): http://www.biomedcentral.com

f. Network and solve programming problems on www.stackoverflow.com

g. Share project, collaborate and improve coding skills on www.github.com

h. Get a job to work remotely on science-related projects on www.upwork.com

These lists continues on and on, what about kids you may ask, do they have places they can connect and be innovative also. Because these days, the craziest ideas come from teenagers: They learn and collaborate on sites like;

a. Science News for Kids: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org

b. Science Made Simple: http://www.sciencemadesimple.com

c. Innovations and Video tutorials: www.YouTube.com

d. Kids also turn their silly innovative ideas to Web apps and mobile apps for people to use, utilizing the power of the web programs (sites and apps) like;

1. MIT App Inventor: www.appinventor.mit.edu

2. Thunkable: https://thunkable.com

e. What about an online organization for Scientific Innovations, we have sites like:

1. Union of Concerned Scientist (UCS): http://www.ucsusa.org/

2. Harvard Open Science Forum on health science: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/section/science-n-health/

3. Student Innovation Challenge (SIC): sic.ng

3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI, “Intelligence” the ability or capacity of the mind to understand facts, data, and when you add “Artificial” it means an intelligence that’s not created by nature but rather human. It is also the process of building a system that could learn and use the data given to it and make brilliant prediction and decision independently.

Wikipedia will also tell us that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence):

Sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and other animals.

AI research is defined as the study of “intelligent agents”: any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals.

AI a branch of computer science that is believed to be emerging technology of the 4th industrial revolution and that could be used to solve lots of problems.

Since it also has to do with programming a system in a smart way, web users and developers are now tapping from its features and gladly using it to innovate things.

Most websites and apps now behave smartly, cognitively intelligent than the human.

Let’s take some time to discuss some of this Scientific Innovative AI Apps.

Robots and AI (Sophia Robot as a case study):

Before we proceed to talk about Robots and what they do like in the case of Sophia Robot, let’s get clarified on most common mistakes people make when they hear Robots and AI. This is known as A Strong AI

Most people think of AI has Robots only, but the real sense is that a Robot is a type of Artificial Intelligence that is regarded as an intelligent machine being designed to look like a human or other creature.

Sophia Robots is an intelligent Humanoid Robot built from recent that can think, reason and act. It has a lot of complex processes but does everything in a fast among time.

Robots like Sophia has some of its form programmings routed to make some connection to the web (internet) for the exchange of current data and storage.

Again, this would not have been possible without the availability of web programming.

We have other types of AI like an Expert system, A Chatbot, Talkbot, Machine Translators, Voice Recognizers, IoT to name a few.

AI techniques are used to solve many real-life problems. Robots are helping to find land-mines, searching humans trapped in rubbles due to natural calamities.

Today we also have AI bots that serve your order in the restaurant. We have robots that that helps to analyze the condition of a sick person. AI that helps doctors to prescribe drugs, diagnose different diseases, AI helps the virtually impaired to one thing or the order etc. All these Innovations are gift brought to us through programming and design implantation. Again, people are still building, and everyday innovation keeps coming up.

Negative Effects of Web Programming on Scientific Innovation

1. Information is not fully secured:

In as much as the internet looks like the paradise of information, there’re some negative effects it has on science and innovation. One of which is security.

Take, for example, classical information like how a bomb can be produced is being found lying open on the internet for people to learn how to build theirs. This, without control, falls into bad hands and they use it for their negative purpose.

Up till now, web resources are still hackable and Hackers (those who steal information form individuals or companies without authorization) take advantage of this vulnerability and hack into people’s computers to steal information and contents.

This can possibly slower than the activities of Scientific Innovation on the web (internet) because most of the people in these modern days depend on the internet for whatsoever they intend to create or innovate.

2. Web programming concepts experience lots of changes:

We can estimate that even though, the web has taken over a lot of things that, only 87% of the world still knows much or few things about it and how to use. Yet, it keeps experiencing a constant and rapid change.

Most of the people who don’t know much about it are the aged brain box scientist who wrote the books we that we mostly use in school today. Even though some of them tries to follow the trend, they still experience a lot of limitation on how they can use the power of this web to hasten the growth of scientific inventions. To some people, their limitation could be due to location (those living in rural areas). And so, you brilliant Ideas and Innovations just die like that because the web (internet) has taken over everything and this people have little or no clue on how to use the opportunities.

It is the belief of every techie and like-minded people that if technologies keep evolving day after day, with time the whole world will be the internet of things itself because a lot of innovations and development are going right now.

Conclusion:

Web programming has undergone a lot of development to the point that the professionalism of it has a bigger impact to the world in general and so Scientific Innovations will keep benefitting from the Internet since it is what the world is comfortable with. A lot will happen, and more is still yet to come.