• Dec 2013 TT comment

When did the Internet and the Web begin

Today, it's acceptable to use the terms "Internet" and "Web" interchangeably, although technically, they are dramatically different.

Simple explanation:

• Internet - is the network
• Web (HTTP) - is a "program" that runs over the network

Many other applications or protocols execute over the network (Internet), such as chat (IRC), e-mail (SMTP), and file transfer (FTP). A client app talks to a server app, using a defined set of commands or protocol.

It's relatively easy to create a custom client app and server app that talk to each other with a custom protocol.

Aug 23, 2013 - Happy Anniversary W.W.W.

Today marks the 22nd birthday of the world wide web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (named WorldWideWeb, which was also a Web editor), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server (http://info.cern.ch), and the first Web pages that described the project itself.

On August 6, 1991, Berners-Lee posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet, although new users only access it after August 23. For this reason this is considered the internaut's day.

"The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow all links to be made to any information anywhere. [...] The W.W.W. project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!" - from Tim Berners-Lee's first message

Aug 31, 2009 - Internet's 40th 'Birthday' Marked

In fall 1969, computers sending data between two California universities set the stage for the Internet, which became a household word in the 1990s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

http://howoldistheinter.net

I would say the Internet is my favorite technology. The Web is my favorite network protocol

Dec 2013 TT comment

While we may use terms such as "Internet" and "Web" interchangeably, they are technically two different things.

Though many people used e-mail and other network applications over the Internet prior to 1990, the "program" that led to the masses being interested in the Internet was the World Wide Web, which lists its birthday as August 23, 1991. But, of course, even that was not enough, since early Web access was through text-only means. So some chaps at the NCSA developed the Mosaic graphical Web browser around 1993. Eventually, they left Illinois for Silicon Valley and started Netscape. In 1995, when Microsoft released Windows 95, a lot of homeowners bought PCs to access the Internet. And so on.

Since I abhor Word docs, PDF files, and printers, and I am most interested in Web-based knowledge management systems where content is created with simple markup languages, like Textile and Markdown, which get rendered into HTML and displayed well on all devices, I'd like to make a small mention about some of the past influences on my favorite technologies.

The 1990-1991 creation of the Web (HTTP and HTML) by Tim Berners-Lee traces its roots to the hypertext systems developed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Many of these systems were not network-enabled applications. They were stand-alone programs. The concepts of the early systems, such as Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu built in the 1960s, influenced the creation of later systems, such as Apple's HyperCard, created in the late 1980s. It all led to the creation of a lightweight, network-aware hypertext system called the Web.

An interesting pre-Web book to read, if you can find it, was published in 1990, titled HyperText and HyperMedia by Jakob Nielsen.

But the inspiration for some of this may go back even further.

In 1945, The Atlantic Monthly published an article titled As We May Think, written by Vannevar Bush. He named his proposed system memex, which sort of meant "memory extender."

Excerpts from Vannevar's 1945 article:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section ~_ the memex film, dry photography being employed.

The Encyclopedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van.

From the Wikipedia page about Vannevar's memex idea:

The concept of the memex influenced the development of early hypertext systems (eventually leading to the creation of the World Wide Web) and personal knowledge base software.

Douglas Engelbart, who is probably best known for inventing the computer mouse, was inspired by Vannevar's 1945 article. In the early 1960s, Engelbart wrote an article titled Augmenting Human Intellect - A Conceptual Framework. In the 1960s, he helped build a hypertext system called NLS, which meant "oN-Line System."

In December of [1968], Engelbart demonstrated a 'hypertext' (meaning editing) interface to the public for the first time, in what has come to be known as The Mother of All Demos. The word processor had been born.

The live demonstration featured the introduction of a system called NLS which included one of the earliest computer mice as well as of video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor.

YouTube - The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart - December 9, 1968 - 1 hr and 40 min

"I don't know why we call it a mouse. It started that way, and we never did change it." - Doug Engelbart, Dec 1968

Here's a table from the book HyperText and HyperMedia :

The History of Hypertext

• 1945 Vannevar Bush proposes Memex
• 1965 Ted Nelson coins the word "hypertext"
• 1967 The Hypertext Editing System and FRESS, Brown University, Andy van Dam et al.
• 1968 Doug Engelbart demo of NLS system at FJCC
• 1975 ZOG (now KMS): Carnegie Mellon University
• 1978 Aspen Movie Map, the first hypermedia videodisk, Andy Lippman, MIT Architecture Machine Group
• 1984 Filevision from Telos; limited hypermedia database widely available from Macintosh
• 1985 Symbolics Document Examiner, Janet Walker
• 1985 Intermedia, Brown University, Norman Meyrowitz
• 1986 OWL introduces Guide, first widely available hypertext
• 1987 Apple introduces HyperCard, Bill Atkinson
• 1987 Hypertext'87 Workshop, North Carolina

#history - #web - #internet - #technology - #blog_jr