The Webs awake : an introduction to the field of Web science and the concept of Web life The central thesis of The Webs 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 Webs 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 The Web and life The spectrum of complexity The importance of discreteness and symmetry in systems Natural structures for man made machines curvature in information and computation Positional information and scale free networks Evolution through engineering A less than simple matter of boundless organics Emergent intelligence and posthuman concepts The physics of information and computing Counter arguments Objective opinions Appendix A: An outline of the semantic Web and its potential for software engineering Appendix B: Beyond the semantic Web