The Internet & World Wide WebWilliam J. MonerSeptember 12, 2012RTF 319 – Intro to Digital Media

Agenda

• Lab notes & other administrivia• The origins and evolution of the

Internet• The origins and evolution of “nerd

culture”• The emergence of the World Wide Web

Reading Due Today

• Manovich, L. (2002). The Language of New Media. pp. 115 – 160• Kleinrock, L. (2010). An Early History of the

Internet.

RECOMMENDED• Okin, JR. (2005). The Internet Revolution:

The Not-For-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology, and Use of the Internet. Chapter 3.• Jordan, T. (1999). Cyberpower: The culture

and politics of cyberspace and the Internet. Chapter 2.

The Internet

A NETWORK OF NETWORKS• Emerged from a peculiar combination

of government research, commercial interest, and enthusiastic early adopters who shaped the medium to include many forms of communication

ARPANET

• Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency• Basic premise: • Decentralize information resources• Provide failsafe message routing (if a

network connection fails or is breached for any reason)

• Based on pioneering research at Xerox PARC (JCR Licklider & Robert Taylor)

THE MYTH

• ARPANET exists to provide for information resources to be available in the case of nuclear attack…

THE REALITY

In case of nuclear attack … boom.

Bob Taylor, Xerox PARC (2009)• Programmers really just wanted to be

able to see information from multiple resources on one screen• Many of the early experiments were

“bottom up” innovations[Taylor is a UT grad. See Kleinrock (2010) for full details on the early Internet!]

ARPANET’s Beginnings• Started with four nodes on the West

Coast• UCLA // SRI (Menlo Park, CA)• Expanded to University of Utah & UC

Santa Barbara

ARPANET PROPOSAL

Core concept: Packet Switching

• As opposed to circuit switching via analog phone lines or telegraphs• Circuit switching : direct line, point to

point• Packet switching • Takes the contents of a data

message, breaks it into evenly-segmented packets, and distributes it via the best route possible• Message is assembled at the

receiving end

TCP/IP

Pioneered by Vint Cerf (Stanford) and Bob Kahn (DARPA)

TCP/IP (1970s)

• Introduced as the official Internet transfer protocol in 1983; developed throughout 70s

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)• Handles the “breaking apart” of

messages into packets for transport• Handles routing through the best

possible route

TCP/IP

Internet Protocol (IP)• Handles addressing• 127.0.0.1 is an IP address• Go to http://whatismyip.com to find

out your own IP address for your current Internet session

TCP/IP

• Imagine a thousand UPS trucks taking a thousand different packets through hundreds of different routes• Each time a packet hits a router, the

router determines the next best path for the data to take• The receiving computer re-assembles

the packets, in order, to form the complete message

DNS (1983)

• Domain Name Servers• Provide translation from numeric IP

addresses to “plain language” addresses• e.g. 206.76.109.52 might translate to

nameserver.utexas.edu• We use the name // the computer uses

the numbers

Email (early 1970s)

• Ray Tomlinson• Introduced the @ symbol to common

vernacular• First “killer app” for the Internethttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120364591

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

• Early file transfer mechanism for moving files over a network from peer to peer or from client to server

What about Bob?

• Bob Metcalfe (now a UT prof in engineering)• Invented Ethernet (the world’s most

popular network topology)• Founded 3COM, now Linksys

FIDONET & BBS (late 1970s)

BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS • Dial-in to a private telephone number

with a modem attached• Log-in with a username and password (if

at all)• Exchange files, messages, play online

games, tie up phone lines• Later: mostly online via TELNET

FIDONET• Mapped network replication of data onto

peer to peer dialup connections

Two Basic Forms of Network Communications

Client/Server Technology• Requires centralized server and

attached nodes

Peer to Peer Technology (P2P)• Every computer is both client and

server; nodes are “equal”

USENET (early 1980s)

Unix Users Group• Hierarchal system for conversation and

file sharing• Still is part of the Internet (albeit rarely

utilized)• Google Groups is one organizing

structure

USENET Hierarchycomp.* – computer-related discussions humanities.* – fine arts, literature, and philosophy misc.* – miscellaneous topics news.* – discussions and announcements about news rec.* – recreation and entertainment (rec.music, rec.arts.movies)sci.* – science related discussions (sci.psychology, sci.research)soc.* – social discussions talk.* – talk about various controversial topics (talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.origins)

alt.binaries

• The USENET “alt” hierarchy existed outside of strict regulation• Became an early form of Internet-

based file sharing• Messages would need to be broken

apart into smaller file sizes and reassembled due to file size limitations

IN COMPUTING:A WORKAROUND ALWAYS EXISTS

MUDs/MUSHs/MOOs

Accessed via TELNET

MUD: Multi-User Dungeons (for D&D-style role playing games)

MUSH: Multi-User Shared Hallucinations• expanded MUD structure with user-

customizable rooms and areas through a shared scripting language

MOO: Multi-user Object Oriented (expanded MUSH structure with more robust features)

IRC (late 1980s)

• Chat-based system organized into #channels• Peer to peer file sharing capabilities• Organized chat, use of bots and other

automated tools to provide for basic games

Internet Service Providers emerge• When the Internet passed through

various steps towards commercialization (due to federal policy changes), the ISP could now connect services to a public backbone• Several hundred ISPs emerged in the

early 1990s

World Wide Web

HYPERTEXT• Everything on the World Wide Web is

rooted in a webpage that describes how content is to appear

• Hyperlinks allow for pages to link to each other on both the same server and remote servers & allows for links to content within a given page

World Wide Web

• Invented at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee• Based on theory by Vannevar Bush, “As

We May Think” and the work of Ted Nelson (coined the term hypertext in 1965) and Doug Englebart (worked at SRI, admired by early Internet pioneers for work on the mouse and an early hypertext system)

World Wide Web

The original proposal:• http://www.w3.org/Proposal.html• Pioneering work on HTTP protocol• HYPER TEXT TRANSFER PROTOCOL• Uses a client/server based

mechanism for sending and receiving documents• Browser = client; “website” = server• Pages can be assembled from many

different information sources or servers

The Web Browser

• Innovated first at CERN, then opened up to other research institutions• Marc Andreessen, at UIUC, worked on a

research team to develop a web browser called NCSA Mosaic• First web browser to include images

The Web Browser (pre-2000)

• Allows for display of text with markup• Allows robust linking between

documents• Allows inclusion of images, some audio

formats• Allows for third-party plugins to play

video, animations, interactive games, and applets• Includes scripting capabilities via Javascript

The Web Browser (post-2000)

• Includes the markup language (HTML)• Hypertext markup language

• Includes a style language (CSS)• Allows flexible description of colors,

fonts, layout grids, multiple backgrounds, multiple layers• Most recent version (CSS 3) includes

support for basic animation, transitions, and other visual elements

Browser Wars

http://www.evolutionoftheweb.com/

Due Monday…READING• Burgess, J., and Green, J. (2009). YouTube: Online Video and

Participatory Culture. Chs. 1 – 2• O’Reilly, T. (2005). “Web 2.0.”LABS & BLOG DUE BY MONDAY @ NOON

RECOMMENDEDBBS Textfiles: http://www.textfiles.com/ (explore at your own risk; vetted info here: http://pdf.textfiles.com/academics/

Internet pioneers:http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/index.html

For fun: Open Terminal, type telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and watch…