Alex Wright - The Web That Wasn't

The Web That Wasn’t

Alex Wrightalex@agwright.com | www.alexwright.org

Monday, November 12, 12

So, how did we get here?

Ada Lovelace

• World’s first programmer

• Invented the machine algorithm

• “An analyst and metaphysician”

Charles Cutter

“The desks had ... a little key-board at each, connected by a wire. The reader had only to find the mark of his book in the catalog, touch a few lettered or numbered keys, and [the book] appeared after an astonishingly short interval.”

Charles Cutter, “The Buffalo Public Library of 1983” (Library Journal, 1883)

Mark Twain

“The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues."

From the London Times of 1904 (1898)

H.G. Wells

“The whole human memory can be, and probably in a short time will be, made accessible to every individual."

H.G. Wells, World Brain, 1938

H.G. Wells

• Global encyclopedia with numerous “tentacles” and “ganglia”

• Secure ID mechanism so that everyone can “promptly and certainly be recognized”

• Elite class of technology “samurai” will guide the world’s progress

Photo: Evan Brus

Paul Otlet

• Creator of Universal Decimal Classification

• Founder of Mundaneum

• Author of Monde, Traité de documentation

Paul Otlet

“The Universal Book, formed of all books, would become a kind of annex of the brain itself, a substrate of memory… ubiquitous and eternal.”

- Traité de documentation, 1934

Françoise Levie / The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World

Vote-links

http://microformats.org/wiki/vote-links

Vannevar Bush

• Science advisor to FDR

• President of Carnegie Institution

• Author of “As We May Think”

“Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the Memex and there amplified.”

As We May Think

• Associative “trails” linking one document to another

• Two-way links

• User-generated content

Eugene Garfield

Founder of Science Citation Index

Inventor of citation ranking

Forefather of PageRank

Doug Engelbart

• Former SRI Researcher

• Creator of oNLine System (NLS)

• Author of “Augmenting Human Intelligence”

Doug Engelbart“Hunches, intangibles, and the human ‘feel for a situation’ usefully co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic aids.

- Augmenting Human Intellect, 1962

Doug Engelbart

• 1968 NLS Demo

Xerox PARC

Founded by Alan Kay and several early Engelbart collaborators

Mission: “The Architecture of Information”

Invented the GUI, precursors of the modern PC

TextText

Apple Hypercard

Ted Nelson

• Coined the term “hypertext” (1965)

• Author of Literary Machines, Dream Machines, Computer Lib

• Creator of Xanadu

• http://www.digibarn.com/collections/books/computer-lib/dm-cover.jpg

Andries Van Dam

http://www.cs.brown.edu/memex/ACM_HypertextTestbed/papers/HARTadj5in.jpg

On Hypertext

• Transclusion to allow deep linking

• Bi-directional links to expose trails between documents

• Intellectual property controls

Nelson-isms

TransclusionDocuverseStretchtext Zippered listsWindow sandwichesIndexing vortexesPart-pouncesTumblers

Collateral hypertext

HumbersThinkertoysFresh hyperbooksAnthological hyperbooks

Grand systems

I Don’t Buy In

The Web isn’t hypertext, it’s DECORATED DIRECTORIES!

What we have instead is the vacuous victory of typesetters over authors, and the most trivial form of hypertext that could have been imagined…

There is an alternative.

Markup must not be embedded. Hierarchies and files must not be part of the mental structure of documents. Links must go both ways. All these fundamental errors of the Web must be repaired. But the geeks have tried to lock the door behind them to make nothing else possible.

We fight on. More later.

- Ted Nelson

Andries Van Dam• Early collaborator with Nelson

• Created the first working hypertext systems:

• Hypertext Editing System (HES)

• File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS)

• Intermedia

Intermedia

Wendy Hall• Developed Microcosm at University

of Southampton in mid-1970s

• First open hypermedia system

• “Linkbases” instead of markup language

Tim Berners-Lee

• Former researcher at CERN

• Built first version of Enquire in 1980

• Released WorldWideWeb in 1989

Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages

by Alex Wright

http://alexwright.org/glut/

Final thoughts

Thank you

Alex Wrightalex@agwright.com | www.alexwright.org

Further readingH.G. Wells, “World Brain”

Teilhard de Chardin, Phenomenon of Man

Boyd Rayward, “Visions of Xanadu”

Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”

Ted Nelson, Literary Machines

Doug Engelbart, “Augmenting Human Intelligence”

Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web

Alex Wright - The Web That Wasn't

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