Dreams in Hypertext: Berners-Lee, Agentic AI, and the Next Web Frontier

In 2001, Tim Berners-Lee shared his extended vision for the Web-the Semantic Web-describing how future software agents would autonomously navigate the Web, performing tasks on humans' behalf.This dream was never fully realized, despite efforts that continued for more than a decade.Meanwhile, in 2023, OpenAI popularized the term "Agentic AI", outlining a vision of software systems that exhibit varying degrees of agenticness while pursuing specific goals in the online environment.What do these two visions share, and how do they differ?Could Agentic AI fulfill the Semantic Web's promise?How can researchers navigate a a landscape where research goals become buzzwords that obscure technological capabilities?This extended abstract, synthesizing a keynote presented at the WebSci '25 workshop Human-GenAI Interactions: Shaping the Future of the Web Science, critically engages with these questions and considers the future of web science research.