Surf's Up
Anyone who follows the computer industry or reads newspapers or watches television is at least aware of the World Wide Web (WWW). Phrases like "See us at http://www.cnn.com" abound and the recent introduction of "MSNBC", the new Microsoft / NBC combination of cable television and WWW site has been the subject of much notice.
The concept underlying the World Wide Web is not new. It dates back to a 1945 Atlantic Monthly article by Vannevar Bush entitled "As We May Think". In the article, Bush, former Dean of Engineering at MIT and Science advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, attempts to chart a course for the use of computers, those marvelous devices developed during the war to calculate naval gunnery trajectories.
Bush sees the main use of computers will be the gathering of information in a manner to support mankind’s method of thinking. Bush draws the distinction between the "linear" way we read a book or magazine article -- from start to finish -- and the "associative manner" in which we think. Our minds jump, often changing direction. If this column were a dialogue rather than printed on a page, there might have been many diversions -- the reader might have asked me to explain more about MSNBC and then we might have gone off to discuss Bill Gates or Microsoft Word as a word processor .. going wherever our digressions took us .. or we have come right back to the subject .. and the same thing might have happened with MIT, FDR, the first computers, World War II, Bush’s life .. in short, any of the people, occurrences, or concepts mentioned in the article to date.
Bush realized that, to achieve this end, there would have to vast amounts of information available to these computers. Bush’s dream was limited by the technology that was available at the time. He envisioned the use of microfilm technology for the storage of this data; a vision based on technology incapable of bringing the dream to fruition.
We now flash forward to the early 1970’s when Theodor Holm "Ted" Nelson coined the term "HyperText", refining Bush’s vision. Nelson saw that on line reference material would be written "deep", rather than long, and replete with “links” to allow the reader to receive in depth-information, written by authorities, on the key points or names in the piece. Nelson saw a vast network of information which he called "Xandau" containing links to all available reference material (twenty-five years later, Nelson, now in Japan, is still pursuing "Project Xandau").
The advent of the internet led rapidly to the proliferation of valuable information accessible on line. Unfortunately, those interested in the information had to know both how to find it and how to obtain it ("download" it) and the people who understood "ftp", "gopher", "telnet", and other internet tools were few and far between. Out of this information chaos was the World Wide Web born.
Subsequent articles in this series will go into web development, interesting places to go, the problem of authenticating the authority of the information provider, electronic commerce, and other topics relating to the use of the World Wide Web. Present web surfers may find some interesting sites listed in the index known as "The Web Wizard’s Sites" http://www.westnet.com/~observer (the "~" is the character to the left of the "1" on the keyboard and requires the shift key)
NEXT: Into The Web