 | ||||
|
|
|
||
|
 Introduction WWW: Past, Present, And Future• Beginnings • The Web Debuts • Better Browsers, New Media • E-Commerce And Search • Self-Expression Ascendant Browser Wars: The Saga Continues The Skinny On Web 2.0 WWW Pop-Up Timeline Browser Image Gallery |
|
||
|
||||
Beginnings
Amazingly, a very early version of the World Wide Web was floating around in at least one person's head way back during World War II. In an essay entitled "As We May Think" that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1945, Vannevar Bush, an American engineer and scientific administrator, argued that as society emerged from World War II, our scientific efforts should become centered around preserving and collecting all previous human knowledge.
To collect and display all this information, Bush even devised a system he named Memex. A combination of broadcast television and microfilm, in theory this device would allow researchers to rapidly access microfilm from remote locations as well as quickly link from one microfilm version of a book to a related topic in another via electromagnetic means.
Memex was a far cry from the notion of hypertext -- computers in the 1940s lacked any sort of visual element beyond the punch card -- but Bush's theory that humans would pool their knowledge for quick reference and cross-reference proved eerily accurate.
Bush was ahead of his time -- Memex proved too complicated and ambitious to make it into production. However, his theories proved highly influential to Ted Nelson, a sociologist and information technology pioneer who devised a digitally oriented theory of information architecture, and to Douglas Englebart, a research engineer credited with the invention of the computer mouse.
In 1960, Nelson dreamt up and devised a notion of interrelated, dynamically linking documents with a simple user interface. This theory became Project Xanadu. His theory marks the first-known usage of the word hypertext.
At the time, implementing a system using Nelson's concept of hypertext in Project Xanadu proved too complex. So, like Vannevar Bush before him, Nelson was never able to complete it. (He does, however, continue to keep the faith with a new information structure project known as ZigZag.)
|
 Douglas Englebart. Courtesy of the Bootstrap Institute. |
In 1963, Englebart set about turning his theories into reality. He set up the futuristic-sounding Augmentation Research Center (ARC). Here he created the first successful implementation of hypertext and the early underpinnings of the graphical user interface (GUI). Just as important, he created a device that allowed users to browse and click through the interface and information: the computer mouse.
In a 1968 demonstration of the technology at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (that included a live video conference with his lab 30 miles away), Englebart gave what has since been referred to as "the mother of all demos." The notion of hypertext in a mouse-driven GUI was so far ahead of its time that some members of the audience thought he was pulling off an elaborate hoax.
The impact of these concepts was revolutionary, even if it took several years for technology to catch up. Nelson's and Englebart's ideas eventually played a key role in the machinations and theories of Tim Berners-Lee, who would go on to invent the World Wide Web.
