The W W W: History, Hypertext

Overview

• The Internet-based world wide web in historical context– Among the most profound changes of recent centuries

• Human culture always “information based”, … and now is, as any time, interesting

– But, ideas of WWW not new ideas ... and where they came from (intellectually) can be useful to determine where it might go … as in, the lessons of history …

• The first graphic user interface for WWW changed everything– Interns’ summer project

• Web site design - the interface to the WWW • Essentially omitted by Shneiderman & Plaisant text

– Differences between interface design for stand alone systems and for the web– Principles of interface design applied– Some elements:

• Information architecture, • Pages, • Site use and navigation, • Empirical studies

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• But, first …

• Call it “computing in the anthropologic context …”

• Much of what follows, is toward the end of understanding the past … to understand the present … to predict-imagine-invent the future …

• Indeed, to design the future

• To help humanity, find fame, …

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• But, first …

• Call it “computing in the anthropologic context …”

• Much of what follows, is toward the end of understanding the past … to understand the present … to predict-imagine-invent the future …

• Indeed, to design the future

• To help humanity, find fame, …

• … or patent and copyright it and find fortune

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• But, first …

• Call it “computing in the anthropologic context …”

• Much of what follows, is toward the end of understanding the past … to understand the present … to predict-imagine-invent the future …

• To help humanity, find fame

• Or patent it and find fortune

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• Will/have computers provide/d the enabling technology for a “new renaissance”?

– i.e., will/have computers enable a qualitative change in the nature of history and culture and …?

– The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization• Douglas S. Robertson, Oxford University Press, 1998

• Based on idea that change/discontinuities occur at certain points, often technologically enabled

– E.g., war and nuclear weapons

• Focus, here, is on amount of information available to an individual

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• 5 broad categories of civilization – Differ principly (or at least among other things) by method used to store

and handle information– “Quantum leaps” for each categories

• The Categories:– Level 0 - Pre-Language– Level 1 - Language– Level 2 - Writing– Level 3 - Printing– Level 4 – Computers

• Will estimate amount of information stored for each category– Uses metric for n bits / character, then n chars / word, then n words stored, and

available to an individual• But, any number of metrics might be used

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• Level 0 - Pre-Language - 107 bits of information– Perhaps most difficult to evaluate is the smallest quantity of information– Lacking language, individual essentially limited to contents of own mind– Lower bound might be set by noting that epic poems such as the Iliad,

– which contain abut 5 million bits have been memorized

• Level 1- Language - 109 bits of information– … plus the information content of the rest of the village, clan, or tribe

• perhaps 50 to 1,000 times individual• i.e., the number of people to whom an individual can talk

– and each of whom is an “information repository”• Estimates take into account redundancy of information

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• Level 2 – Writing - 1011 bits of information– Total of recorded (hand-written) information

– Greatest accumulation in library of Alexandria • 532,000 scrolls in 3rd century B.C.

– Rough estimate of information content• Iliad and Odyssey were divided into twenty four

books each – if Iliad contains 5m bits, and 1/24 size of scroll, – Then, Alexandria about 100 billion bits 1011 bits

• Level 3 - Printing - 1017 bits of information– Total of printed information

– Hundreds of libraries larger than Alexandria– Information so vast individual can’t comprehend

• daily output can exceed individual’s

comprehension

An Information Based Description of the History of Civilization

• Level 4 – Computers - 1021 bits of information– Total of electronically recorded information

• Amount of printed information relatively trivial in comparison to total

– Accelerating rate of information production– Total amount of information relatively unimportant

• Level 3 exceeds an individual’s ability to use

– What’s new with computers is that:• “Computers multiply ability to find, analyze, and make

use of vast quantities of information, thereby circumventing the information limits that bedeviled Level 3 civilization”

• Information Increase far greater than increase associated with change from Level 2 to Level 3

– “Ability to easily find and utilize entire information stock of a civilization will be hallmark of a Level 4 civilization”

– … and how, exactly, would you do that?

Whew!

Now an easy one … or two

• What does HTML stand for?– HyperText Markup Language

• What does HTTP stand for– HyperText Transfer Protocol

• What is hypertext– “Text that is not constrained to be linear”

Hypertext, … and the W W W

• Hypertext– Once, a vision– Connections among information elements …

– Early 20th century examples (and probably Plato, too)– Doing it old-school, Bush’s (film-based) MEMEX– Berners-Lee, Internet, hypertext, www

• And a student project

BTW, … more later

• Hypertext– Once, a vision– Connections among information elements …resemble connections among ideas …

BTW, … more later

• Hypertext– Once, a vision– Connections among information elements …resemble connections among ideas …

Overview

• Orienting ideas:– The www is “hypertext” … though of a limited form

• Connections among information elements that resemble connections among ideas …

• Early 20th century examples (and probably Plato, too)– Doing it old-school, e.g., Bush’s (film-based) MEMEX– Berners-Lee, Internet, hypertext, www

• And a student project• W3 history: http://www.w3.org/2004/Talks/w3c10-HowItAllStarted/

• Designing web sites:– Guidelines quite useful– Entails:

• Organization and access of information– Site design, information architecture, navigation

• Display of information– Page design

Organizing (and retrieving) Information

• Organizing (and retrieving) Information is a really old challenge …– As in library at Alexandria

• Even pre-electronic storage information structure has evolved– Scrolls books

• Essentially linear structure– Read more or less start to finish– Though structuring within books

• Table of contents, index, annotation, etc.

• Have been ideas and efforts to make printed form of information (words and pictures):

– More accessible– More like how people …

• Think• Use information and ideas

– Non-linear

World Wide Web = Hypertext

• Real “power” and interest in Internet only arose well after its implementation

– Just a system that works in nuclear warfare … Arpanet– Relatively few people cared about ftp, bbs, …

• At least “few” compared to current use of WWW

• Interest and use of Internet arose only after:

1. Specification of WWW some decade after the network itself• i.e., how to go from one file/document to another via its address … the link

2. And then only with design of a graphic user interface for WWW did things explode• Text-based browsers not too neat (at least to non-computer types)• How to “navigate” easily and with use of pictures/images/icons

• Essential idea of “navigation” among documents dates back much further

– Will see a few

Early (pre-W W W) Ideas about Non-Linear Information Organization

• Paul Otlet, 1895– A really big box of index cards

• H. G. Wells, 1938– “World Brain”

• Vannever Bush, 1945– Memex – memory extender

• J. C. R. Licklider, 1960– Man-computer symbiosis

• Doug Englebart, 1963– Augmentation of human intellect

• Ted Nelson, 1965– Coined term “hypertext”

Paul OtletUniversal Network for Information and Documentation, ~1880

• Founding father of information science– Universal Decimal Classification– Responsible for widespread use of 3x5 index cards

• Remember card catalogs?

• Universal Network for Information and Documentation

– All world’s knowledge interlinked and made available remotely

• Even without know exactly how …– Envisioned, e.g., commercial service answering questions – Indexed information stored on cards in cabinets plus

original documents• 1895: 400,000 entries• 1934: 15,000,000

– All hardcopy and searchable!– Moved from original location with Germany’s invasion of

Belgium, taken to museum in 1993

• In fact somewhat different from hypertext, in that “associations”, or links, are derived from the classification

H. G. Wells“World Brain”, ~1930

• H. G. Wells, as in “War of the Worlds”– Also, a popularizer of science

• “World Brain” – More modestly, “World Encyclopedia”

• Or, at least, a global information system– Book of essays, 1938, when 72

• Audience of 5,000 at Northwestern University– Reprinted 1971, 1994

• "The Brain Organization of the Modern World" – "...a sort of mental clearing house for the mind, a depot

where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared."

– Automated system with microfilm suggested for storage medium

• “… any student, in any part of the world, will be able to sit with his projector in his own study at his or her convenience to examine any book, any document, in an exact replica."

• Perhaps, though, ideas were more related to notion of emergent intelligent systems …

H. G. Wells“World Brain”, ~1930

• H. G. Wells, as in “War of the Worlds”

• “World Brain” – More modestly, “World Encyclopedia”

• Or, at least, a global information system

• "The Brain Organization of the Modern World" – "...a sort of mental clearing house for the mind, a depot

where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared."

– Automated system with microfilm suggested for storage medium

• “… any student, in any part of the world, will be able to sit with his projector in his own study at his or her convenience to examine any book, any document, in an exact replica."

Vannevar Bush MEMEX – Memory Extender, ~1940

• MIT professor 25 years, etc.– Claude Shannon (information theory) was student

• Roosevelt’s science advisor in WWII • Invented continuous intergraph, or

Differential Analyses– Essentially, Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine with shafts driven

by motors– Analog computing solutions to differential equations (gears, etc.)– Big and handmade

Bush's MEMEX, 1945

• "As We May Think", 1945– MEMory EXtender system– Atlantic Monthly!

• Problem: – “new knowledge not reaching the people

who would benefit from it”– Concerned about the explosion of

scientific literature which made it impossible even for specialists to follow developments in a field,

• Solution:– “A Memex is a device in which an

individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

– desk, slanting screens, buttons, levers, and keyboard

• “A memex looked like a desk with two pen-ready touch screen monitors and a scanner surface. It had several gigabytes of storage space filled with textual and graphic, indexed, information”

Bush's MEMEX, 1945

• Microfilm projectors for viewing different information

– uses mircofilm for storage – new material can be added via microfilm

or by direct entry via ‘‘dry photography''– supports indexing, cross referencing,

keywords .

• Supports indexing, cross ­­referencing, keywords

– supports associative indexing via links and creation of ``trails'' which can later be followed

– allows annotations ­ comments, and marginal notes .

– envisions multimedia i/o: other senses, such as, speech and audio

• Associative indexing– "The process of tying things together is

the important thing.“– New profession of ``trail blazing"– Trail building and trail following by user

Bush's MEMEX, 1945

• Editor’s foreword to Bush’s 1945 Atlantic Monthly article: 

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coordinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but not the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's famous address of 1837 on "The American Scholar," this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge. --THE EDITOR

J.C.R. (Lick) LickliderMan-Computer Symbiosis, ~1960

• “Man­Computer Symbiosis”, 1960– “The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together

very tightly and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information­handling machines we know today.”

– A seminal paper

• “Galactic Network”, 1962– Papers at BBN envisioning networked computer– Vision of Internet

• Prerequisites to achieving man­computer symbiosis – Immediate Goals:

• time sharing of computers among many users• interactive real­time system for information processing and retrieval• large scale information storage and retrieval • electronic i/o for display and communication of correlated symbolic and pictorial information

– Intermediate Goals: • facilitation of human cooperation in the design and programming of large systems• combined speech recognition, hand­printed character recognition, and light pen editing

– Long Term Goals: • natural language understanding (syntax, semantics, pragmatics) • speech recognition of arbitrary computer users• heuristic programming

 

Douglas EngelbartAugmentation of Human Intellect, ~1960

• Turing Award, 1998– Highest award bestowed by ACM

• Augmentation of human intellect (1963) – “... increasing the capability of man to approach a complex

problem situation, gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems.”

– Recognized his ideas built on Bush's idea of a machine that would aid human cognition

– hierarchical structures for ordinary documents– group creation and problem solving

• NLS System (1965 1968):– outline editors for idea development – hypertext linking – tele-conferencing, word processing, e-mail

• System required:– mouse pointing device for on-screen selection: Invented the mouse

(1965) as a replacement for light pens for use in his NLS system– a one-hand chording device for keyboard entry – full windowing software environment – on-line help systems– concept of consistency in user interfaces

Ted Nelson“Hypertext”, ~1960

• In 1965, Nelson coined the word "hypertext" (non-linear text) and defined it as: – “… a body of written or pictorial material

interconnected in a complex way that it could not be conveniently represented on paper."

• From Dream Machines – Describes hypergrams (branching pictures),

hypermaps (with transparent overlays), and branching movies

• Vision of a "docuverse" (document universe) – Extension of document ties that could combine

contributions from people with no formal ties – a global ‘‘docuverse''– "everything should be available to everyone. Any

user should be able to follow origins and links of material across boundaries of documents, servers, networks, and individual implementations. There should be a unified environment available to everyone providing access to this whole space." [Nelson, 1987]

Ted Nelson“Hypertext”

• Xanadu, a repository publishing system – Micropayments!– "intended to store a body of writings as an interconnected whole, with

linkages, and to provide instantaneous access to any writings within that body." [Nelson, 1980].

– This system has no concept of deletion - a write-once system. • Once something is published, it is for the entire world to see forever.

– As links are created by users, the original document remains the same except for the fact that a newer version is created which would have references to the original version(s).

– Since conventional file systems are not adequate to implement such a system, Project Xanadu has focused much of its attention on the re-design and re-implementation of file systems.

– This, in turn, required the creation of a whole new operating system incorporating a hypertext engine.

– Back-end for the system was scheduled to be released on Sun Workstations during 1992

The Internet and Non-Linear Information Organization

• History of Berners-Lee specification

• History of Mosaic

Invention of the WWW1990

• ARPANET, 1969 – then, NSFNET – then, Internet

– DOD sponsored distributed network with alternate routes to withstand nuclear attack

– Internet Protocol added, 1978

• Tim Berners-Lee– CERN

• Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire

• European Organization for Nuclear Research

– 1980, ENQUIRE• Hypertext with linked pages

– 1989, First proposal for “large hypertext system”

• BTW, ACM SIGWEB 1st Conference ~1988

– 1990, with Robert Caillau standards for www published

Invention of the WWW 1990

• 1990, CERN phone book first document on WWW

– 1st web server a NeXT designed by Steve Jobs

– info.cern.ch

• 1st web browser– Tim Berners-Lee– Text only

• Paul Kuntz, 1991– Brought NeXT software back to

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center– Louise Addis adapted for VM/CMS

os on IBM mainframe– Display center’s documents

From alt.hypertext, August 6, 1991

In article <1991Aug2.115...@ardor.enet.dec.com> kan...@ardor.enet.dec.com (Nari  Kannan) writes:

>    Is anyone reading this newsgroup aware of research or development efforts in

> the following areas:

>     1. Hypertext links enabling retrieval from multiple heterogeneous sources of   > information?

The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any   information anywhere. The address format includes an access method   (=namespace), and for most name spaces a hostname and some sort of path. We have a prototype hypertext editor for the NeXT, and a browser for line mode   terminals which runs on almost anything. These can access files either locally,   NFS mounted, or via anonymous FTP. They can also go out using a simple protocol   (HTTP) to a server which interprets some other data and returns equivalent   hypertext files. For example, we have a server running on our mainframe   (http://cernvm.cern.ch/FIND in WWW syntax) which makes all the CERN computer   center documentation available. The HTTP protocol allows for a keyword search   on an index, which generates a list of matching documents as annother virtual   hypertext document.

If you're interested in using the code, mail me.  It's very prototype, but   available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch. It's copyright CERN but free   distribution and use is not normally a problem.

The NeXTstep editor can also browse news. If you are using it to read this,   then click on this: <http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html> to find   out more about the project. We haven't put the news access into the line mode   browser yet.

We also have code for a hypertext server. You can use this to make files   available (like anonymous FTP but faster because it only uses one connection).   You can also hack it to take a hypertext address and generate a virtual   hypertext document from any other data you have - database, live data etc. It's   just a question of generating plain text or SGML (ugh! but standard) mark-up on   the fly. The browsers then parse it on the fly.

The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data,   news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other   areas, and having gateway servers for other data.  Collaborators welcome! I'll   post a short summary as a separate article.

Tim Berners-Lee                         t...@info.cern.ch World Wide Web project                  Tel: +41(22)767 3755     CERN                                    Fax: +41(22)767 7155 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland             (usual disclaimer)

The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere. . .

Berners-Lee PosterDecember, 1991

• ACM conference, Hypertext ’91 – third conference– ACM SIG (Special Interest Group) SIGLINK, founded 1992, prior to widespread

knowledge of WWW

Popularization of WWW

• Early adopters of www were universities, centers, etc.

– As with ARPANET

• Text based browsers with embedded links

– Primitive functionality and interface elements

• Erwise and Viola, 1992– For X-windows– 1st graphical browsers outside NeXT-based

• Mosaic– Code still available! (checked, 9/24/14)

• ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/ – Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina

• Undergraduate students at UIUC and working at NCSA• Used computers belonging to UIUC to develop, so belonged to

university• 1993 demo:

– http://www.totic.org/nscp/demodoc/demo.html

– Strongly support of integrate multimedia– Responsive to bug fixes– Mosaic – Netscape Navigator

• Jim Clark, founded SGI• “browser wars”

Hypertext - Introduction

• “Hypertext” - what it is

• You all know what it is – – idea is part of ubiquitous information

systems … www– “google it” is part of the language

• People just use hypertext systems and somewhat correctly view it as the natural way to present information electronically

– e.g., Help with “links” to other information, web browsers

• “User-directed information access and retrieval”

– not bounded so much by linear presentation

 

Example:­

Hypertext as a Directed Graph

• Formally, a hypertext is a (labeled) directed graph (or network)– G = (V, E)– Information items can be viewed as nodes (or concepts)– Ability to move (navigate) to another information item can be viewed as links

• A hypertext system is made of nodes (concepts) and links (relationships)– Node usually represents a single concept or idea. – Node can contain text, graphics, animation, audio, video, images or programs.

Nodes: Information Units

• Again, WWW is an example of simple (primitive) hypertext

– Untyped nodes and links

• Nodes can be typed – E.g., detail, proposition, collection,

summary, observation, issue– thereby carrying semantic information

• Nodes are connected to other nodes by links

• Links also can be typed also, e.g., supports, refutes

– The node from which a link originates is called the reference and the node at which a link ends is called the referent.

– They are also referred to as anchors.  

• The contents of a node are displayed by activating links

Nodes + LinksA very general model …

• Recall, a “useful” big picture - Card et al. ’83 plus attention– Senses/input f(attention, processing) motor/output– Notion of “processors”

• Purely an engineering abstraction

• How is long term memory organized?

LTM – Models of Semantic Memory

• Semantic memory structure– Contains LTM knowledge of world– Provides access to information

– Generic knowledge -- specific details lost– Represents relationships between pieces of information

– Important for rule-based behavior• Supports inference

• Many models, theories, accounts, schemata proposed

• Semantic network model (example next slide): – E.g., Inheritance – child nodes inherit properties of parent nodes– Relationships between bits of information explicit– Supports inference through inheritance

Human Semantic MemoryModeled as a “semantic network”

• Many models of human memory

– Semantic network model

– Also, frames / schemata

– More later

• Nodes are “information units”

– “Propositions”– Attributes

• Links are relations– E.g., color,

instance, “isa”

Nodes: Information UnitsRecall, …

• Again, WWW is an example of simple (primitive) hypertext

– Untyped nodes and links

• Nodes can be typed – E.g., detail, proposition, collection,

summary, observation, issue– thereby carrying semantic information

• Nodes are connected to other nodes by links

• Links also can be typed also, e.g., supports, refutes

– The node from which a link originates is called the reference and the node at which a link ends is called the referent.

– They are also referred to as anchors.  

• The contents of a node are displayed by activating links

Sup - A Cognitive Account of Hypertext: Reading and Writing Models

• Some argue that hypertext parallels human cognition and facilitates exploration.– We think in nonlinear chunks, which we try to associate with each other and build a network of

concepts.

• When we read a book, – we go back and forth a number of times to refer to previously read material, – to make notes, and to jump to topics using the table of contents or the index.

• When we set out to write a document we first develop an outline of ideas. – Then, we brainstorm, write down on paper, organize, revise, reorganize and repeat the cycle till

we are satisfied with the outcome - a coherent document.

• In fact, we have been forced to adapt to traditional, linear text because of representation on paper.

 • To understand hypertext, it is useful to understand how people read and write

documents.

• Reading and writing models have been developed by cognitive psychologists that can be used to understand non-linear thinking by human

And Now the W W W

• Is the WWW a hypertext/hypermedia?– Yes

• Will it solve the problems, as described by Bush?– You tell me - and why or why not.

• Importantly, the WWW allows not only non-linear access to information, but also connectivity among (potentially) all the electronic information sources on Earth.– Now, will the WWW solve ....

• Recall, the two components of a hypertext system:– a “database” which describes: “concepts”/nodes, “relations”/links,

interaction mechanisms for traversing the network, and display mechanisms for presenting node content/information

End

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