What Problems Did Internet Users Have in the 1990 That the World Wide Web Aimed to Solve
What problems did Internet users have in the 1990 that the World Wide Web aimed to solve, what were the solutions it offered, and why did the web have such a a big impact in such a short time?
The purpose of this essay is to discuss the above topic appended. As the Internet and the World Wide Web are often used interchangeably, It is fundamental to begin by exploring, nonetheless in little detail, the difference between these words. This will be followed by a discussion of the history of the early Internet, the circumstances that led to the birth of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Moreover, in order to analyze the questions within the topic appended, this essay will be divided into three key sections. Section one will outline and discuss the key problems internet users encountered in the nineteen- nineties before the development of the World Wide Web; Section two will discuss the solution the World Wide Web offered to the problems identified; Section three will expatiate on why the World Wide Web has a big impact in a short space of time.
All throughout this essay, various scholars including Berners-Lee, Abbate, and Gillies, Whittaker will be used to build the discussion. Finally, a conclusion drawing on the discussions provided will be laid down.
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably, however, these words differ. The Internet is a global network of computers connecting millions of computing devices, which carries an extensive variety of information , resources and services including the hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW), file transfer, email system, social networking sites (Leiner et al, p.1); the World Wide Web is one of many services running on the Internet,invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, (Berners-Lee 1999; Hafner and Lyon 1996; Naughton 1999).
The series of event which occurred in the nineteen –fifties including the political event between the United States and the USSR, the launch of Sputnik by the USSR in 1957 is a major contributing factor to the continuous research by the Department of Defence (DoD) of the United States. According to Whitaker, the Second World War was a major contributor which led to the demand of national security in America. The research into security led to the strategic implementation of a network that would revolutionize the internet today as it is widely known. Following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the United States department of defence funded the advanced research project (APRA) in 1962, (Whitaker, p. 15), in a scheme to prevent a Soviet take-over of American communications in the case of a nuclear war, (Castell, p.6). Although the development of APRA was military oriented, the project was dominated by academic scientists. APRA project moved its contracts into research in communication networks led by Dr J.C.R. Licklider. Between 1963 and 1967, APRA began its research into the feasibility of building a computer network, and selected nineteen participants, (Whitaker, p. 16). This laid the foundation for APRANET, and in 1969, APRANET was born.
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (APRANET) became the ground breaking invention which allowed for the development of internetworking, where multiple separate networks could be joined together into a network of networks. In 1969, the physical network was constructed with a four node network connected between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Stanford Research Institute (SRI), University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and University of Utah. The APRANET connection continued to expand that between nineteen-seventy to nineteen seventy-three, various individual networks such as ALOHANet in Hawaii, University College of London, and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway began to connect to APRANET, ( Whittaker, p. 16). According to Lawrence Roberts, a program manager to oversee the development of the APRANET, he envisioned APRANET as a way to bring researchers together through a network that would foster the interconnectedness amongst researchers and academics through the use of computers, ‘cooperative programming’. Roberts further argued that APRANET would “be stimulated and in particular fields or discipline it will be possible to achieve a critical mass of talent by allowing geographically separated people to work effectively in interaction with a system”.( Roberts 1967b, p.2). With the introduction of more people to the notion of computing, the personal computer (PC) gained ground. In 1982, European UNIX Network (EUNet) introduced USENET (Whittaker, p. 18). Usenet was accessible to all computer users and its accessibility led to its significant growth, (Whittaker, p. 19). As the number of hosts grew, the problem of expansion became apparent. The solution to this problem was to have separate networks whilst using the same protocols connected via gateways, hence, the invention of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), (Abbate, p.128)
There continued to be significant research and development on improving the protocols that remain the standard for Internet transmissions such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), (Whittaker, p. 16), and ultimately, over the course of a decade, APRANET, the network set up by the US Department of Defence became the rudiment of global , communication networks which transformed from a single network that connected “a few dozen” (Castell, p. 7) (Abbate, p.113) sites into a system of many interconnected networks, through the use of TCP/IP. Abbate argued that the Internet represented a new approach to networking, although its existence was not part of the APRA’s initial networking plan. (Abbate, p.113), it became a phenomenal success. By the 1980s, Domain Name Systems (DNS) was in place, meaning that different networks could access the computer anywhere,(Whittaker, p.18-19).
The successful introduction of the Internet saw to its rapid adoption and expansion in the number of users. A major problem was the rapid growth and the size of the internet. Zakon argued that by October of the nineteen-nineties, the number of internet hosts totalled three-hundred and thirteen thousands, (Zakon 2012). The rapid influx of internet users , electronic mail system, online chat, Abbate described the emergence of the Internet as a tool for public communication,(Abatte, p.181). Furthermore, the Internet was built as a text only interface which discouraged its wider use. With graphical interfaces found on PCs, online information that incorporated images were not accessible; many users with innovative ideas of imputting graphic images were not able to do so; for Unix workstations, software developers also had a major draw back when trying to create more graphics-oriented interfaces. Also, users of the Internet found that locating and retrieving online information was difficult. According to Abbatte, although file transfer programs were available, users had to know the names of the desired file and the host computer, this system of data retrieval was slow and inefficient,(Abatte, p. 213.). Although new services which were created during the nineteen-nineties tried to address the problems encountered by internet users, there was no one way to resolve the problem; as all the formats available at the time were not compatible with one another, no one program was able to handle such diversity. Furthermore, there were no links to the various information found on the Internet, and the various protocols available were not compatible, (Abatte, p.213). According Berners-Lee, through the use of Internet, he found that loss of vital information was another major problem often experienced at CERN, the organization he worked for.
The invention of the World Wide Web became the solution that would address the problems Internet users encountered. The Web is one of many application that uses the Internet, invented in the nineteen-nineties by Tim Bernes-Lee,(Berners-Lee, p. 1).Tim Berners-Lee was a consultant at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, Berner-Lee, like many Internet users at the time appreciated the practicality of networking , however he acknowledged that there were severe limitations to the Internet. Berners-Lee found that although the Personal Computers (PCs) were becoming image oriented, the Internet limited them to text only. Also, he found that his information was stored in different self contained databases, which made data search or retrieval difficult and did not allow for free flow of knowledge amongst academics and scientists using the Internet. To resolve these issues, Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to CERN to create a system that would allow remote access across network, heterogeneity, non centralization, hypertext links, use of multimedia and live links,( Berners-Lee, 1990). In order to achieve this, Berners Lee and his colleagues had to address the issue of computer incompability by creating a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which Abatte described as a “format negotiation between computers to ensure that machines agreed on which formats to use when exchanging information”, (Abatte, p.215). With the availability of the communication services provided by TCP/IP, Berners-Lee and his group designed a transfer protocol that would guide the exchange of between Web browsers and Web servers, which they called Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The group also designed a Uniform Resource Locator, (URL) a standard address format that specifies the type of application protocol being used and the address of the computer with the desired information, which would be an homogenous way enable browsers and servers to locate information on the Web, (Abbatte, p. 215).
In nineteen-ninety, the introduction and demonstration of the World Wide Web became widely accepted at CERN,and continued to be developed as an academic tool,( Whittaker, p. 20). Unlike the Internet, the World Wide Web was flexible, it allowed access to various Internet services including FTP (File Trasfer Protocol), gopher, WAIS, and Usenet news,(Abatte, p.215), the system was versatile and user-friendly, and accomodated programmers and their creative designs. Within a short space of time, the World Wide Web had become a phenomenal tool both for scientists and academics alike. The distribution of the Web software over the internet , and the installation of Web servers by high energy physiscs sites in nineteen-ninety-one and two contributed to the increases participation explosion, (Berners-Lee et al., p.76; Caillau 1995).
With the privatization and commercialization of the Internet, widespread access was encouraged. Personal Computers like Machintosh and Windows operating systems began to incorporate Internet-based Web software and graphical user interfaces . With the network services growing, and still mainly dominated by a group of academics and researchers, there remained more to be done. In nineteen-ninety three, Andreessen with a team at the National Centre for Super-computing Applications at the University of Illinois began developing an improved Web browser called Mosaic. Mosaic was a more developed web browser that included color images as part of the Web page, these images could, like text words be linked or be used as links , (Schatz and Hardin, p. 897). It was designed to run on most web browser and most importantly was available to every Internet user free of charge. In its first month of its release in November nineteen-ninety three, Schatz and Hardin argued that more than fourty thousands copies were downloaded,and by the spring of nineteen-ninety four, a million or more copies were estimated to be in use, (Schatz and Hardin, pp.897 and 900). From Mosiac, Andreesen and his team moved on to develop Netscape; a free commercial version of the Web browser , which included many features including security measures to support financial transaction, increased speed and a simplified user interface, (Andreeseen, 1995). The Web solved all the problems internet users faced, it transformed the internet from a research tool to a popular medium of communication, links between sites were made laterally instead of hierarchically. It achieved active user participation, and made users both producers and consumers,(Abatte, p. 218).
In conclusion, like all technologies, the Internet and World Wide Web is a product of its social environment.The phenomenal impact of the Internet and the World Wide Web from its birth till date cannot be underestimated. It has been a subject of discussion by various scholars, the use of the Internet as a result of the Web continues to spread across the world, underpinned by globalization, various countries and government have acknowledged that without doubt the Internet and the Web are tools which could be used for development. Castells explained that “what characterizes the current technological revolution is not the centrality of knowledge and information but the application of such knowledge and information to knowledge generation and information processing/ communication devices, in a cumulative feedback loop between innovation and the uses of innovation”. Although, a tool which was originally developed as a military tool, the Internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, its problems are have now become its strengths,continuous innovations and development means the World Wide Web had opened the door to a technological revolution that is unending.
References
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Cailliau, R. (1995) A little History [Online] (Accessed : 21 March 2013) Available at http://www.cern.ch/CERN/WorldWideWeb/RCTalk/history.html.
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Whitaker, J. (2002) The internet :The Basics. London: Routledge
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