[ih] WWW dates

[Dave Crocker]

Phill Gross wrote:
> 1960 - Ted Nelson founds Project Xanadu.  See Note 3 below.
> 
> 1989 - Tim Berners-Lee initiates Web proposal within CERN ("Weaving the
> Web", p22)


Phill,

It is probably it worth citing some additional activities that took 
place during the intervening 29 years.

A few thoughts:

The Englebart and Nelson work is usually cited for the invention of the 
hyperlink construct.  More generally, the ARC created a rather 
widespread community that shared documents, although operationally it 
was a central service.

My own view is that the distributed Internet web service began with 
Anonymous FTP.

For nearly 2 decades, it was the standard way to publish public 
information.  Although its human factors design really sucked, it was 
entirely useful for the existing networking community.

Since Anonymous FTP was a usage variation of FTP, rather than a 
technical enhancement requiring specification, I'm not sure its 
inception was documented.  I would guess it was fully functional by 
1975, but have no direct memory of who or when it was started.

In the late 80's, as use of the net grew, there were multiple efforts to 
make it easier to publish, find and access documents around the net.  On 
the publication side, I would be inclined to at least cite Gopher, 
especially since it offered serious, direct competition to the Web 
approach for a number of years.

Gopher was in extensive use before the Web.  I remember doing a class on 
Internet technology in 1990, in Pittsburgh.  We did a real-time 
demonstration of Gopher, where the class chose which nodes we would 
pursue.  We started with a global list of regions and eventually walked 
our way down an access path, winding up looking at the Town Council 
minutes for Wellington, New Zealand.  I remember being struck by how 
easily we could access something that distant, non-technical and, 
frankly, mundane.  That the Wellington Town Council was willing and able 
to publish this material suggested the eventual ease and impact  of 
global availability.

Having alternate approaches around made the choice of the 
http/html/browser that much stronger, since it made clear the balance 
between effort and benefits.

Gopher was easier to publish, because the documents were simple text. 
HTML required special effort to create, but produced more broadly 
appealing results.

Better still is that it seemed to get the learning/use/benefit balance 
just right.  Original HTML was strikingly simple, but produced wonderful 
results.

Both Gopher and the Web had diffuse control.  Any hierarchy of reference 
was an artifact of operational construction, rather than being inherent 
in the storage model.

Gopher distinguished between directory entries and documents.  Documents 
were only available at the leaf of the access tree.  One could spend a 
long time walking down an access path, only to find that the accessed 
document was not relevant.  By contrast, the web offered the ability to 
get something useful to the user -- ie, document contents -- anywhere 
along an access path.  Hence it's user "reward" experience is quicker 
and more extensive.


d/


-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net