Transcript The Web: the 8th Medium

The Web: the 8th Medium
Newest Mass Medium
Tim Berners-Lee
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Creator of World Wide Web
Compared to Gutenberg
Worked in particle physics lab
CERN in Geneva 1989
Proposed the web project for physicists
System to put information in interface
with all other information
Web terms to know
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Web site
Web page
Browsing
Server
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Internet
CyberCyberspace
William Gibson
Web limitations
• Bandwidth
• Music and video
limitations
• Cable and
telephone wiring
Information highway
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Like U.S. interstate highway system
1969 Defense Dept. computer network
ARPAnet
1983 National Science Foundation
Backbone system to interconnect
networks
Upgrading the Internet system
• 1992 High-Performance Computing Act
• National Research and Education
Network
• Potential
– Medical--x rays and CAT scans by net
– Library of Congress index/books scanned
– Satellite photos of climate and weather
Online services
• 1973 Mead Data Central
– Lexis--first full-text database
– State and federal statutes, court decisions
– Delivered via telephone lines
– Nexis in 1978
• Journalism users: Times, Post, AP, USNWR
Web model
• Users
• Access providers
• Content providers
– Online services--CompuServe, AOL
– Commercial sites--amazon.com
– Institutional sites--cjr.org, FCC.gov
– Media sites--cnn.com, nytimes.com
Online advertising
• Growing web audience
– 1995 Nielsen Media Research est.
– 37 million with access; 24 million users
– Average hh income-->$80 K a year
• Web’s advertising reach
– Hard to estimate
– CPM doesn’t work
– “Hit” or “visit”--only way of counting
Web technology
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Transistors
Digitization
Compression
Miniaturization
Efficiencies
Tech terms
• Transistors
– Bell labs 1947--semi conductor switch
• Nobel Prize to inventors
– Glasslike silicon (sand) responds to + or • Electrical charge
– Called “transistors” (semiconductors or
“chips”)
– On-off switches--very fast
digitization
• Bell labs applied dig. to telephone
• Converted voice to coded pulses
• Digital on-off signals ~ to persistence of
vision
• 1962 First digital phone call
– Soundwaves converted to electrical
currents, then back to sound waves
Other techniques
• Compression
– To squeeze different calls onto same line
– Multiplexing--
• Miniaturization
– Transistors smaller, cooler, more reliable
– 1950s--table models, battery-powered,
portable radios
– Computers downsized
Incredible Factoid
• Marquardt Corp:
– All information of
past 10,000 could be
contained in 6X6X6
cube!
– All 12 million books
in LC contained in 2
cubic inches!
Fiber-optic cable
• 1960s Corning
Glass Corp
• Capable of carrying
at speed of light
• Made of silicon
• Encoded as light
pulses, not electrical
• 1980s replaced
copper wire
Nonlinear communication
• Hypertext and the web
• Linear communication
– Specified, start-to-finish, sequence
• Vannevar Bush 1945--MEMEX
• Ted Nelson 1962--”hypertext”
– Method of interrelating messages; users
control sequence
hypermedia
• Nontext links:
– Sounds, images and movies
• Full-text is called “shovelware”
• Media Lab at MIT--Daily Me -personalized experimental paper
• Wall Street Journal’s Personal Journal
• USA Today hypertext (nonlinear) news
Trends
• Technological convergence
• Digitized forms for print, broadcast,
electronic media
• Media companies heavily invested,
MSNBC, et al
• Gov’t deregulation--pragmatic
• More competition Telecom Act 1996
Public policy issues re: Web
• Universal access
• Hard for authoritarian government to
control
• Cybersex, dating, and stalking
• Cyberpornography
– Communications Decency Act of 1996
– Unconstitutional limit on free expression
– SurfWatch and other web monitors