[ih] The web as wind and whirlwind? (was Re: History from 1960s to 2025)

[Patrik Fältström]

...and the rest of the people that did "hang around" in the work related to URI/URL/URN/URA development. We did many cool things at Bunyip including diving deep into whether one should use the Gopher like referrals (information in the link) or HTTP like (content type at destination in the HTML header). Lots of work on whether one should have one or multiple round trips in the application layer (HTML uses one, SMTP many), and of course (I say, of course) Whois++ and query routing where we tried out routing on the application layer to give better referrals "as one can not have one index in one location for the whole internet" (I claimed).

And then came Alta Vista! :-)

I.e. remember that WWW to some degree was "just links" and people clicking until Alta Vista. Because of that "Start pages" where important for people and organisations. Ads on web pages came in these days.

I think the work that many did in the 1990's did lead to both brutal full search of the internet (AltaVista and then Google algorithms for links to score pages). A different track starting(?) at Z39.50 -> Whois++/Centroids -> URI's and Dublin Core metadata set for long term stable identifiers and structuring data and indices.

But yes, Peter Deutch, Alan Emtage, Leslie Daigle and others did a great job. I was happy to be there for two years. What a ride!

Who remembers the chocolate lego train in Montréal?

Patrik

On 21 Dec 2025, at 1:31, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:

> With regard to Archie, don't forget Peter Deutsch and the rest of the Bunyip crew.
>
>         --karl--
>
> On 12/20/25 1:50 PM, Steven G. Huter via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>> On 12/20/25 11:47 AM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Do you feel the creation of Archie, first search engine in 1990, helped, or was necessary for,  the success of the World Wide Web?
>>
>> https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/alan-emtage/
>>
>> https://www.internethalloffame.org/2019/02/12/alan-emtage-and-birth-first-internet-search-engine/
>>
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