Seminar 4 The World Wide Web

Introduction to the Digital Liberal ArtsMDST 3703 / 7703

Fall 2010

Business

• Project meetings– Be sure to sign up

• Reading responses going forward– Log into the course blog– Create a post– Associate post with the category for the class, e.g.

09-14 Responses

• Questions?

Overview

• Conclude Hypertext II by reviewing Hyperland• Brief history of the Web as culmination of

hypertext period and beginning of Web 1.0

HyperLand

A documentary on the future of hypermedia created just as Tim Berners-

Lee is inventing the World Wide Web

Digital Representation

• See two examples: Music and Stories(Hyperland Quotes on course site)

• What do these have in common?

shape = structure = code

Both show shapes of time

everything is information

Digital representation allows you to “see structure”

shape = synchrony = everything-at-once

Picasso, Guernica, 1937

Hypertext?

Guernica example as hypermedia in both form and content

How does Hyperland envision the solution to too much

information?

Agents

(agents are like angels)

Do the projects and technologies described in

Hyperland resemble what we find on the web today?

A Brief History of the Web

The history of the Web is a story with three major subplots

NetworksHyerptext

Community

Distributed Networks

Arpanet 1969

http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap2.htm

A military project (DARPA) to develop a network that could survive a nuclear attack

First two nodes

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography//atlas/historical.html

1969

1971

1971

1977

Hypertext

Nelson 1963

HyerpText

Digital Community

“From the moment people have connected computers to one another, we have been using them to talk to one another”

Ethan Zuckerman

http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/ezuckerman/

A paper-based database offering thousands of hacks, tips, tools, suggestions, and

possibilities for optimizing your life

Steve Jobs called it the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web and

the Bible of his generation

Stuart Brand, 1968--1972

http://static.open.salon.com/files/whole_earth_catalog1245701068.jpg

Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link 1985

An early BBS, outgrowth of the WWC

HTML, HTTP, and World Wide Web

Berners-Lee brought the three subplots together

World Wide Web 1989Involves all three

dimensions

How it works …

• Hypertext = HTML – A language for documents

• Networks = HTTP – A language for computers (clients and servers)

• Community– Purpose from the beginning– Focuses on how people use information– Both HTTP and HTMP build this requirement into

their architecture …

What is the problem Berners-Lee was trying to solve?

The problem of knowledge management

“the problems of loss of information about complex evolving systems”

“Many of the discussions of the future at CERN … end with

the question -- Yes, but how will we ever keep track of

such a large project?”

“When two years is a typical length of stay, information is constantly being lost. “

How does the shape of data in the web match its intended

social use?

[Although CERN is] nominally organised into a hierarchical management structure, this does not constrain the way people will communicate, and share information, equipment and software across groups.

The system must allow any sort of information to be entered. Another person

must be able to find the information, sometimes without knowing what he is

looking for.

The actual observed working structure of the organisation is a multiply connected "web" whose interconnections evolve with time.

Hierarchy = appearanceNetwork = reality

How is it possible to connect networks, hypertext, and

digital community?

Networks connect computersHypertext connects documents

Communities connect people

Each mode of connection shares a common cultural logic (in spite

of cultural differences)

A weird mix of military, hippie, hacker, and academic cultures

. . . sharing a common cultural form

Effects and Affordances

Effect 1

• The social dimension overtook the computational one– We still don’t have agents– No true hypertext (according to Nelson)– Instead, filtering has become socially mediated

Google 1999

Facebook 2006

We are left with social-semantic space

Effect 2

• The Network is the Medium• Laws of the Realm– Metcalf's Law– Page Rank– The Long Tail– Connectedness

Metcalfe's Law

Page Rank

The Long Tail

Six Degrees

How is content filtered in this new space?