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Welcome to theWorld Wide Web

08Mx22, II MCA

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Intuitive Definition

– World Wide Web: A way of thinking about information storage and retrieval

– Web: Software that runs on some of the computers connected to each other through the Internet

– Two important innovations played key roles: • Hypertext • Graphical user interfaces (GUIs)

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Origins of HyperText

– 1945: Vannevar Bush speculated engineers would eventually build a machine ( Memex ) that would store a person’s books, records, letters, and research results on microfilm. Mechanical aids would help retrieve

– 1960: Ted Nelson described similar system where text on one page links to text on other pages. He called it hypertext

– 1960s: Douglas Engelbart created first experimental hypertext system on one of the large computers

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Ted Nelson And D Engelbart

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The Beginning

– 1990-91 – Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau develop HTML in Switzerland; first concept of the “World Wide Web” – a set of linked HTML documents accessed through the Internet

– 1992-93 – NCSA in Illinois develops Mosaic; first widely used Web browser

– 1994 – Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark found Netscape, Inc. and develop first commercial Web browser: Netscape Navigator

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Sir Tim Berners Lee and Marc Andreesen

The Adolescent Internet

– 1990s saw a boom in personal computing - more home and office computers than ever

– General public starts to use the Internet, especially the World Wide Web and email, in the mid 1990s

– Internet moves from government-run to privately-run

– WWW becomes a commercial vehicle in the late 1990s

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How Did We Get Here?Web 1.0: Hyperlinked information, static content Web 2.0: Dynamic information, social content Web 3.0: Organized information, content plus meaning

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The Age of Innovation

– Since 1995, the Web has become nearly ubiquitous. In Sweden, Access to internet is now a Fundamental Right.

– “ Web 2.0” technologies began appearing in this decade

– Before Web 2.0 – anyone could post to the web… but you had to know HTML, or use web editing software, or hire some geek to do it for you!

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The Age of Monetization

– Web 2.0 technologies freed content – anyone can contribute; barriers are very low

– First came blogs and wikis, then social networking sites

– Rush to capitalize on Web 2.0 in last 2 years – MySpace bought by News Corp.; Microsoft buys a stake in Facebook

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What’s the Difference?

Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Reading Writing Companies Communities HTML XML, AJAX Surfing RSS Owning Sharing Web Forms Web Applications Dialup Broadband Web Pages Blogs AOL, eBay, IE, Yahoo! Firefx, Flickr, Digg, Google

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The New Dawn

– Since its inception, the Web has been an unorganized mess – organizing it in a meaningful way is a worthy goal

– Semantic metadata would greatly improve searching (but search is already better than it was in the ‘90s)

– Semantic Web could allow programmers to create software that acts autonomously – software that “understands” Web content and does exactly what you want/need

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Where Do We Stand

– So far, only a handful of start-ups are working on Semantic Web systems – there has been no “killer app” that has led to widespread adoption

– Investors are always looking for the next hot tech, but so far the Semantic Web hasn’t generated anything more than curiosity

– Web 2.0 technologies have caught on, though – one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is tagging, or the ability for anyone to assign descriptive keywords to things on the Web

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The Social Semantic Web

– Can Web 2.0 tags represent some ordered collective intelligence? Are Web 2.0 tags metadata? More importantly, are tags semantic metadata?

– Think of it as the Wikipedia model instead of the Britannica model

“When a substantial number of users tag content for a long period of time, stable tags start appearing in the resulting folksonomy”

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The Possibilities are Endless…

– Important to remember - the Web has become a commercial enterprise

– Distinction between bottom up (generative) technologies and top down (sterile) technologies – the Internet/Web is the ultimate generative technology – a “collective effort”

– Where is the balance between openness and security if the generative technology of the Web is just as useful to the bad guys as it is to businesses and everyday users?

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– As fear and mistrust take root, tech companies are beginning to move back to sterile technologies– even as user-generated content (and user-generated metadata, in the form of tags) revolutionize the Web

– These include nonprogrammable devices such as TiVo, BlackBerry, iPod, mobile phones, and game consoles – vendors can change them, but users can’t

– Tech Gaints seem to be moving in the direction of vendors approving new software applications written for their products

The Capitalist Factor

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References– Berners-Lee, T., & Fischetti, M. (1999). Weaving the Web: the

original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor .

– Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001, May). The Semantic Web. Scientific American, 284 (5), 34-43.

– Gillies, J., & Cailliau, R. (2000). How the Web was born: the story of the World Wide Web.

– Free Press Action Fund. (2008). Save the Internet: fighting for Internet freedom. Retrieved June 3, 2008, from http://www.savetheinternet.com

Thank You