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Techno-history

historical developments of the Internet and technology

historical developments of the Internet and technology

The Whole Internet

July 2, 2009 by Roy Johnson

updated version of first complete Internet guide

The Whole Internet was one of the earliest-ever computer books to become a best-seller. That was in 1992, when the first major wave of Net users needed information, and there as very little of it about. Ed Krol produced a manual which was well informed, comprehensive, and examined the technology in detail. However, it wasn’t very easy to read, and you needed to grapple with an arcane command-line interface which assumed you had grown up with Unix as a second language.

The Whole InternetThis new version is an update and complete re-write. It is based on the big changes which have come over the Net and the way it is used in the last eight years. Number one development of course is the Web, which moves up from a subsidiary chapter in the original to occupy the centre of this edition. Former features such as Gopher, Archie, and Veronica on the other hand are relegated to a footnote section called ‘Archaic Search Technologies’.

But this difference also makes the manual easier to read and understand. The emphasis has been changed from how the Net works, to how it can be used. There is far less impenetrable code cluttering the pages. Instead we get clean screen shots and nice photographs of what the Net looks like on screen, not at the DOS prompt. Ed Krol has been been very fortunate in choosing his co-author, and their co-operation has produced a far more readable book.

They cover all the basics which someone new to the Net would need to know. How to send email and follow the conventions of netiquette.; what to do with attachments; how to behave on mailing lists; understanding newsgroups; and how to deal with security, privacy, and Spam. They explain how to choose from a variety of Web browsers (including even one for the Palm Pilot). I was struck by how much more accessible all this technology has become in the short time since I struggled through the first edition.

This radical shift in user-centred design is also reflected by the inclusion of completely new chapters on Net commerce, banking, gaming, and personal finance. After a chapter on how to create your own Webages, there is an introduction to what are called ‘esoteric and emerging technologies’ – conferencing, streaming audio and video, and electronic books. This is a very successful attempt to cover the full range of the Net and its activities in a non-snobbish manner. They end with practical information – maximising the effectiveness of your Internet connection, searching techniques, and they offer a thick index of recommended resources.

The original Whole Internet may have been a more striking phenomenon because of its originality at the time, but this new edition has the potential to reach even more readers, largely because it explains the Net and shows how it can be used in a way which is much more attractive and accessible. It has gone straight onto my bibliography of essential Net reading, and I will certainly be recommending it to all my students.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Kiersten Connor-Sax and Ed Krol, The Whole Internet: The Next Generation, Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 1999, pp.542, ISBN 1565924282


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Filed Under: Computers, Techno-history Tagged With: Computers, Media, Techno-history, Technology, The Internet, The Whole Internet

Weaving the Web

July 3, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the history of the Web – by the man who invented it

Everybody knows that Tim Berners-Lee is the man who invented the World Wide Web – and that he hasn’t become a millionaire. Weaving the Web explains the reasons why. It’s his own account of one of the most profound developments in twentieth century technology – almost as important as the invention of the Net itself. His story begins in one of the spiritual homes of computing – Manchester UK – where his both his parents worked on the first commercial mainframes made by Ferranti in the 1950s.

Weaving the WebHe wrote his first program to link information in 1980 with “no loftier reason than to help me remember the connections amongst the various people, computers and projects at the [CERN] lab”. He was concerned to share information amongst a community of scientists who were equipped with different languages, different computers, and different operating systems – and it’s interesting to note the persistence of this altruism as the development unfolds.

His narrative is the now-familiar one of noble intentions battling against indifference, resistance, and outright opposition. There is a wonderful sense of intellectual excitement in following the step-by-step struggle to convince people that information could be linked and shared. And all this is as recent as 1990.

There were also conceptual difficulties. Ten years ago, people on the Net were regularly ‘lost in Cyberspace’ – an expression you don’t see used much any more. How difficult it was for most of us to conceptualize all this back in the early 1990s. It was not an easily intuitive thing to take in that when you clicked on a link you were ‘going’ to a computer at the other side of the world. Worse still – when the connection dropped, you felt as though you had fallen out of an aeroplane in mid-Atlantic. We’ve learned since not to worry when something disappears off the screen.

He discusses the competing systems such as Gopher and WAIS [remember those] and the strategic advantage of making SGML the base for hypertext markup language [HTML], the lingua franca of the Web. He is also forthright enough to admit his own failings, and even describes a conference paper which was rejected, as well as a rather sadly uneventful meeting with Ted Nelson in 1992. There’s also an explanation of how the rather clumsy term URL came about, though he continues to use URI [Indicator] throughout the book.

Once the Web takes off in the early 1990s, people such as Jim Clark and Marc Andreesson start to come into the picture. But whilst they make their fortunes turning Mosaic into Netscape, Berners-Lee selflessly devotes his energies to keeping the Web universal, out of the control of individual interests.

It has to be said that the story begins to dip a little at this point, with important but less dramatic decisions to be taken about protocols and standards.

Click for details at AmazonBy 1996 we’re deep into the details of the Web Consortium [WC3] and its workings. The story picks up again as he covers the Netscape-Microsoft squabble and the move towards extensible markup language [XML]. He goes on to discuss the problems of encryption, privacy, censorship, domain name registration, and policies which should be in place to protect the individual. He also indulges in a little futurism, speculating about the consequences of permanent online connections [Yes please!] and the benefits of XML, which he strongly endorses. His account culminates with a prediction that the Web will evolve into what he calls the ‘Semantic Web’ – a system whereby information will be more intelligently and qualitatively structured.

It’s a relatively easy book to read. I had the impression that it’s a transcript of interviews. And he ends, rather surprisingly, by revealing his belief in parallels between the Web and a ‘non-religious’ faith he has taken up in the US. But one thing remains constant throughout – his passionate desire to keep the Web an open, international standard – and for that we can all be grateful.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, London: Orion Books, 1999, pp.244, ISBN 0752820907


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Filed Under: Techno-history Tagged With: Computers, Cultural history, Technology, Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, World Wide Web

Where Wizards Stay Up Late

June 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

computer and Internet pioneers – a historical account

Do you know who invented the Internet? No, it wasn’t Al Gore – even though he once foolishly claimed he did. And in fact, it wasn’t just one person. What this fascinating documentary study reveals is the teamwork, the complementary technologies, and even the engineering competition which led to its development. It also dispels the notion that the innovation was fuelled by cold war defence concerns about possible nuclear attack.

Where Wizards Stay Up Late The majority of early adopters were research scientists in particle physics who simply wanted access to each other’s work. At first it was just a few research departments of US universities which linked themselves. The computers were huge mainframe affairs, and the results at that time still came through on punched tape. There were no mice or monitors, no Windows, and even the tiny amounts of memory were laughably small by today’s standards.

It’s amazing to realise how recent all these developments have been. It also emphasises the fact that this major innovation was a result of simultaneous developments in a number of separate disciplines, and one which came out of the sort of team work and democratic ethos which have left their mark on the Net to this day.

Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s account adopts a lively documentary approach to telling the story of how it all happened. The writing is much influenced by Tom Wolfe’s new journalism, with rapid character sketches, cliff-hanging chapter endings, use of dramatic understatement, on-the-spot point of view, and lots of well-researched technical detail. Having said that, it’s not always an easy read. The names of engineers and scientists come in thick and fast, and the chronology jumps around bewilderingly in the sixties and seventies – but what emerges is a fascinating picture of many technological developments eventually pulled together to deliver what was in fact the birth of the Internet.

There’s a wonderfully dramatic moment when all the strands are pulled together in a contract submission to run the network – the computers, the wired links, and what emerges as the heart of the Net – packet-switching technology. This was invented simultaneously by Donald Davies in the UK and Paul Baran in the US. It allows information to be broken up into small units, transmitted, then reassembled without loss at any other part of a distributed network.

Their timescale stops short in the 1970s – which means the story doesn’t include anything on the World Wide Web – and strangely enough there’s very little mention of people such as Vannevar Bush or Ted Nelson. Their focus is all on the often wacky individuals and the college-boy teams who went on to become the Founding Fathers, though I was also glad to see that they give electrical engineers their due.

Other more well-orchestrated histories of this revolutionary development may be written in the future, but this one will be difficult to beat in the short term as an account of the skills, the drama, and the sheer inventiveness of these Net pioneers. There’s a full bibliography and a good index, so it’s no surprise that this title has been chosen as a set text on one of the Open University’s most popular ever courses – ‘You, your Computer, and the Internet’.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: the origins of the Internet, New York: Free Press, new edition 2003, pp.304, ISBN 0743468376


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Filed Under: Techno-history Tagged With: Computers, Cultural history, Internet history, Technology, Where Wizards Stay Up Late

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