Technology of the Web

Web technologies have greatly impacted our cultures, economics, communities, businesses, and educational institutions, and have caused one of the most dramatic shifts in global communications in the last few decades. Some feel that the introduction of the Internet has had social implications as dramatic as that of the printing press. A report by the Media Center Network noted that:

…audiences, not institutions, are shaping the future of news and information. The emerging ecosystem relies on a symbiotic relationship between traditional and new media…. Pervasive computing devices and information technologies will soon replace traditional mediums as principal means for distributing news and information. (Media Center Network, 2005).

To understand the development of the Internet, and its impact on global communications we will start at the beginning. According to Paul Albitz's book DNS and BIND, the internet began in the late 1960s as a result of an experimental wide area network - the ARPAnet - funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, with an "original goal of allowing government contractors to share expensive or scarce computing resources." This network also facilitated this collaboration in the form of shared files, software, and electronic mail to facilitate "joint development and research using shared remote computers." (Albitz, 2001).

The TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) protocol suite - developed in the 1980s - "quickly became the standard host-networking protocol on the ARPAnet." (Albitz, 2001). According to Albitz, UC Berkeley's popular BSD Unix operating system was free to universities, and was instrumental in democratizing internetworking between universities and other organizations. This created the availability of ARPAnet connectivity to many more organizations than was available before. Many of the computers connected to the ARPAnet were connected to LANs (Local Area Networks) and shortly after, other computers on the LANs were communicating via the ARPAnet as well. The network grew exponentially, and "the original ARPAnet became the backbone of a confederation of local and regional networks based on TCP/IP," commonly called the Internet. (Albitz, 2001). In 1988 the Department of Defense began dismantling the ARPAnet, so another network - called the NSFNET - "funded by the National Science Foundation…replaced the ARPAnet as the backbone of the Internet…in…1995 the Internet made a transition from the publicly funded NSFNET backbone [to] multiple commercial backbones, run by long-distance carriers such as MCI and Spring, and commercial internetworking players like PSINet and UUNET." (Albitz, 2001).

Through the 1970s, the ARPAnet contained only a few hosts, and the name-to-address mappings for every host was contained in a file called HOSTS.TXT, which was maintained by SRI's Network Information Center - the NIC - which was distributed from a single host, SRI-NIC. (Albitz, 2001). When the ARPAnet was small the arrangement was workable, but as the number of hosts grew it became unmanageable. Especially after the ARPAnet moved to the TCP/IP protocols, and the population on the Internet grew substantially problems arose concerning traffic flow and load capacity, name collisions, and consistency. In 1984, Paul Mockapetris, of USC's Information Sciences Institute, designed the architecture of the new system RFCs 882 and 883, describing the Domain Name System. (Albitz, 2001).

The Internet and the Web are often considered the same; however, this is not correct. The Internet is a vast system of communications channels - comprised of a variety of technologies, such as satellite, microwave, optical fibers and copper wire - and the Web is a linked document structure that exists within this network. (Bell, Parr, 1999). The Web was originated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while he was working at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. (Raggett, 1998). Berners-Lee developed a system to share and organize information with other institutions involved in particle physics research situated around the globe. In 1980, before coming to CERN, Berners-Lee created a hypertext program, called 'Enquire,' which eventually became the prototype for the Web browser he developed while at CERN. For his program, he created a simple protocol - HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) which retrieved documents via hypertext links. The text format Berners-Lee created for HTTP was HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) which was based on SGML (Standard Generalized Mark-up Language), an internationally recognized text mark-up language. Berners-Lee's inventions and the Internet gained popularity with research facilities and universities, and his Web browser came out to the general public in 1990 with the NeXT computer. (Raggett, 1998).

Throughout the 1990s the Web - in hindsight, called Web 1.0 - continued to develop rapidly. According to Tim O'Reilly's article, What is Web 2.0?:

Netscape was the standard bearer for Web 1.0, and Google holds that position for Web 2.0 [because] Netscape framed "the 'web as platform' in terms of the old software paradigm...[a] web browser [and] a desktop application….Google, by contrast, began its life as a native web application, never sold or packaged, but delivered as service, with customers paying, directly or indirectly, for the use of that service….None of the trappings of the old software industry are present. No scheduled software releases…no licensing or sale, just usage….Google requires a competency that Netscape never needed: database management. (O'Reilly, 2006).

O'Reilly claims that the dot.com bust of the early 2000s was a manifestation of a "common feature of all technological revolutions." He concludes that "shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage." (O'Reilly, 2006). The concept of "Web 2.0" was born out of a "conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International" a web development firm. There is a great deal of disagreement about what Web 2.0 means exactly, but O'Reilly lists these characteristics of Web 2.0 applications: the web as a platform, user controlled data, cost-effective scalability, remixable data source and data transmission, and collective intelligence. Some of the companies that are harnessing Web 2.0 strategies are: Flickr, eBay reputation, Amazon reviews, blogs, Google, and Wikipedia. (O'Reilly, 2006). O'Reilly points out:

…while both Netscape and Google could be described as software companies, it's clear that Netscape belonged to the same software world as Lotus, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and other companies that got their start in the 1980's software revolution, while Google's fellows are other internet applications like eBay [and] Amazon. (O'Reilly, 2006).

O'Reilly states that "the central principle behind the success of the giants in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be this, that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence." (O'Reilly, 2006). Companies like Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon rely heavily on the hyperlinking property as web connections grow organically. Sites like Wikipedia encourage a collective-participation model, and "the infrastructure of the web - including Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl, PHP, or Python code involved in most web servers - relies on the peer-production methods of open source, in themselves an instance of collective, net-enabled intelligence." (O'Reilly, 2006). O'Reilly concludes that the lesson learned is: "Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era." (O'Reilly, 2006).

Another prominent feature of Web 2.0 is the rise of the Internet as "community," resulting in the popularity of blogging and web meeting grounds such as chatrooms and MySpace. According to The Media Center, the technological and social developments of the Web 2.0 are creating a "new media ecosystem" which they have termed "We Media." This grassroots network of individuals is changing the manner in which information is disseminated to the general public. "We Media" grows exponentially by:

…dialog, conversation and engagement….No central news organization controls the exchange of information….The fluidity of this approach puts more emphasis on the publishing of information rather than the filtering. Conversations happen in the community for all to see. (The Media Center, 2005).

From a designer's perspective, the web is a new means to publicize a message. Laurel Harper, in How magazine states "…a designer's mission when creating a Web site is no different than if she were developing a newspaper, brochure, book or poster. Clear communication is still the ultimate goal." (Harper, 1998). Designer, Galie Jean-Louis predicts that graphic designers will "have the opportunity to impact software development amid UI design programs [bringing] a greater aesthetic, cultural and sociological impact to a wider audience." (Harper, 1998). •