thehistoryandfutureoftheworldwideweb

The History and Future of the World Wide Web

The History and the Future of the World Wide Web

Hello! This month I would like to discuss a very big topic - the history and future of the World Wide Web.

A Short History of the Web

In order to understand the future, it is important to understand the past. So let me briefly explain how the web came into existence. The world wide web is made up of two key ideas: (1) Hypertext, which is a fancy term for documents connected to each other by links, and (2) the Internet, a world-wide computer network that holds these documents.

Hypertext was invented by Dr. Vanavar Bush. He wrote an article called "As We May Think" in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. (You can read the article at: http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/works/vbush/vbush.shtml) In this article he proposes that the world's scientists work together to create the "Memex" machine. "Memex" stands for "memory extension". It was a system for storing, linking, and retrieving all scientific knowledge. In other words, he was proposing the world wide web! Of course, because there were no personal computers in 1945, Dr. Bush had to use mechanical technology. He suggested that each Memex contain hundreds of thousands of tiny sheets of microfilm. Each sheet of microfilm would contain the image of a page. Tiny holes punched in the microfilm would encode the links between documents. A scanner on top of the memex would allow you to enter new information into the memex. And you could punch new holes in the microfilm when you wanted to make new links between different pages.

The Memex was never built, but by 1968, computer scientists, such as Dr. Douglas Engelbart, of the Stanford Research Institute, had built working comperter hypertext document systems. (By the way, Dr. Engelbart's research team also invented the "mouse".)

The Internet was started in the early 1970s. The original Advanced Research Projects Agency (or ARPA), network linked together about 60 computers at colleges, businesses, and government agencies. Over time more computers were added, until it grew into today's Internet.

By the middle of the 1980's, all the pieces necessary for the world wide web were available. It was just waiting for someone to put them together. That man was Tim Berners-Lee. While working at the CERN European physics laboratory in 1989, Dr. Berners-Lee decided to write a hypertext program to help his fellow scientists share their research information. He invented the three key pieces of the world wide web: The HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) document format, the URL (Universal Resource Locator) link format, and the HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) transport protocol.

Dr. Berners-Lee's original web browser only ran on the NeXT computer. But in 1992, the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) wrote a web browser called "Mosaic" that could run on PCs, Macintoshes, and unix workstations. Companies, such as Netscape and Microsoft, soon produced even more powerful web browsers, and that, more or less, is the web as we know it today.

How about the future?

The web drastically lowers the cost of distributing information. This is going to have far-reaching effects on every activity related to creating or distributing information.

The web will replace books. It is already replacing printed computer manuals and university-level textbooks. Over time, as more students have ready access to the web, I think it will replace textbooks at all levels of education. A web-based textbook can be distributed very cheaply. It can be updated quickly. It can contain links to supporting information. And it can't be lost or damaged by the student!

Over time, web terminals will become cheap enough, portable enough, and fast enough, that they will replace most forms of printed media. (Yes, even magazines. In the future, you will be reading ASCII DOS/V on a computer screen!) There won't be the clear distinctions between a newspaper, a magazine, and a book. Those distinctions exist today primarily because of the relative costs creating and distributing the different media. This will probably lead to the creation of new kinds of written media.

Once most new books and magazines are coming out on the web, it seems likely that public libraries will change. Today, many libraries are installing web terminals. In the future libraries may also become web publishers, where individuals can place their own information on the web.

Businesses, especially information businesses, will also be affected by the web. They will be changed in three main ways:

    • The web can help companies distribute information between employees. The web helps make it possible to have a "paperless office", where most of the information is kept on-line. (At Netscape, where I work, I receive about 50 e-mail messages a day, but less than one piece of physical mail a week.)

    • The web's ability to work with different kinds of computers makes it easier for two companies to work together. Security safeguards built into the web will allow companies to share some information without sharing all their secrets.

    • The web can help companies provide services for customers. It costs a company about $5 to have a person answer the phone and handle a customer's inquiry. If the customer visit's the company's web site instead, the customer can receive comprehensive service at almost no cost.

Software and Software Distribution

The web makes it very easy to start a software company. All you need is an idea, a personal computer, and a web connection. This is leading to an explosion of small software companies. Over time this should increase the number and variety of programs available.

There will be more ways of buying software, too. You will be able to buy programs on a per-use basis, or by paying a monthly fee. Some programs will even charge per-feature-that-you-actually-use, so that beginners don't pay as much as power users! The web will be used to deliver the software to the users, and send the payments to the companies.

The web will improve the quality of software. When a program crashes, information about the crash will be automatically sent back over the web to the developer. The developer will then be able to analyze the crash, fix the problem, and automatically send the customer an updated version of the program!

Software Distribution at Netscape

One of the best examples of web-based software distribution can be seen at http://www.netscape.com, where users can try and buy Netscape software. In order to fufill the high demand for our products, we have developed an elaborate computer system. Here is how it works: When we are ready to distribute a "Pre Release" version of Netscape Communicator, we put it on a particular computer at Netscape called "ftp1". From there, the software is automatically copied to 12 other computers. These 12 computers are located in Mountain View, California. (The 12 computers are named ftp2 thru ftp12, and ftp20. They are a variety of workstations from different unix vendors.) In addition to Netscape's own ftp sites, the software is also copied to about 30 official non-Netscape mirror sites. These mirror sites are located around the world. The process of copying can take up to a day, depending upon network load. To keep users from being frustrated, we wait until the software is ready on all the mirror sites before announcing it. That way the software is immediately available to be downloaded.

I have some tips for you the next time you want to download software from Netscape:

    • ftp://ftp20.netscape.com/ is the largest and fastest of the Netscape ftp servers. If you have a high-speed network connection to the USA this is the best server to use. (But, usually, it will be faster to use one of the Japanese mirror sites.)

    • We try to have new releases ready to go on Thursday, or Friday, so that they can be copied to the mirror sites over the weekend. Then we announce the new release on Monday or Tuesday. So if you expect that a new version of Communicator is about to come out, it pays to check the Netscape ftp sites on Saturday mornings!

Conclusion

It is easy to mistake a clear view for a short distance: Just because something seems like a good idea doesn't mean that it will be easy to accomplish. Some of the ideas I've mentioned here will take a long time to happen. Some may never occur. And certainly other things, that I haven't imagined, will happen instead. But I am sure that the web will, one way or another, fulfill Dr. Bush's dream of augmenting and enhancing the human mind.