Origins of the Web

(Note: Shared with CIS 658 and CIS 371.)

• What is the Internet?
• What is the WWW?
• Be careful when using these terms in this class. Take care to use them precisely.

Original Berners-Lee paper

• What is the Web?
• How is the Web different than the Internet?
• Who “invented” the Web?
• Why?
  • What was the Web designed for?
  • What problem was the web created to solve?
    • Documenting all the different, interrelated projects and their results.
    • “Yes; but, how will we ever keep track of such a large project.”
    • “Often the information has been recorded, it just cannot be found.”
  • Why was this problem especially noticeable at CERN?
    • Many different, tangentially linked projects made it difficult to organize all relevant information hierarchically, and keep documentation and results up-to-date.
• Where did Berners-Lee get the inspiration for a web structure?
  • “The actual observed working structure of the organisation is a multiply connected “web” whose interconnections evolve with time.
• What type of structure does Berners-Lee explicitly avoid?
  • A fixed hierarchical structure.
• What motivates Berners-Lee to say “CERN is a model in miniature of the rest of world in a few years time. CERN meets now some problems which the rest of the world will have to face soon”?
• “Another person must be able to find the information, sometimes without knowing what he is looking for.”
  • What does Berners-Lee mean by this?
  • Describe a time when you have done this.
• According to Berners-Lee, what are the main problems with keywords?
  • People don’t tend to choose the same keywords.
  • “The keywords become useful only to people who already know the application well.”
  • Ever have this problem on StackOverflow?
• How does the proposed web differ from Hypercard?
  • Hypercard was single-user.
• When was the term “hypertext” coined?
  • In the 1950’s
• “An intriguing possibility, given a large hypertext database with typed links, is that it allows some degree of automatic analysis.” What does this sound like? Google.
• What do “Live links” sound like?
  • Dynamic content.
• What kind of web page corresponds roughly to the “Personal Skills Inventory” mentioned by Berners-Lee?
• Give an example of how modern web servers “…provide existing information in a form matching the standard interface.”
  • They can serve plain text.
  • They can serve files (.doc, .pdf)
• This quote makes me feel old: “(… and yes, this would provide an excellent project with which to try our new object oriented programming techniques!)”
• What requirements did Berners-Lee identify for the Web? What does each mean?
  • Remote access: Data is not stored on the end users’ machines
  • Heterogeneous: Client and servers represent a variety of different systems (VM/CMS, Mac, VAX, Unix)
  • Decentralized / Uncoordinated: “Information systems start small and grow. They also start isolated and then merge. A new system must allow existing systems to be linked together without requiring any central control or coordination.”
  • Access to existing info: Can serve plain text, .pdf, .doc, etc. Data doesn’t need to be HTML to be served.
  • Private links: Bookmarks
  • Bells and Whistles: Graphics
  • Data analysis: Can crawl data, analyze it, and look for problems (e.g., missing people)
  • Live links: Dynamic Data
• Non requirement: Copyright enforcement. Why
  • Proposal was target at CERN, which was generating data for public consumption, not for sale.

1994 CACM Article

• How does Berners-Lee describe the web in the 1994 CACM article?
  • “A pool of human knowledge”
• How does he describe the browsing experience?
• List several tools that Berners-Lee envisions the Web replacing. Did it?
  • NNTP, FTP, Gopher, WAIS. All but FTP have effectively been replaced.
• What is a “hierarchical space”?
  • The slash. Used to separate levels of hierarchy in an URL.
• Why does Berners-Lee claim that HTTP is “perhaps misnamed”?
  • Because HTTP is useful for transferring any data, not just HTML.
• Which points from “the future” have come true? Which have not?
  • A name service allowing documents to be referenced by name rather than location: Not really.
  • Hypertext editors allowing non-experts to publish information: Yes.
  • More sophisticated document type definitions: Yes.
  • Integration with concurrent editors and other real-time features: Yes.
  • Easy-to-use servers: Yes.
  • Evolution of objects from principally human-readable to more machine-oriented. Yes.
  • Conventions on the Internet for commercial use: Yes.
• Is the web as easy to update as it is to read?
  • Press the class for their opinions. (Poll everywhere question?)
• Why is HTTP stateless (whereas FTP is not)?
  • It is common for links to lead to different servers, so a single connection wouldn’t be helpful.
• Where did the name “gopher” come from?
  • It is the mascot of Minnestota (the university where gopher was invented).