alex wright - the web that wasn't
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Presented at UX Brighton 2012TRANSCRIPT
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So, how did we get here?
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Ada Lovelace
• World’s first programmer
• Invented the machine algorithm
• “An analyst and metaphysician”
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Charles Cutter
“The desks had ... a little key-board at each, connected by a wire. The reader had only to find the mark of his book in the catalog, touch a few lettered or numbered keys, and [the book] appeared after an astonishingly short interval.”
Charles Cutter, “The Buffalo Public Library of 1983” (Library Journal, 1883)
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Mark Twain
“The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues."
From the London Times of 1904 (1898)
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H.G. Wells
“The whole human memory can be, and probably in a short time will be, made accessible to every individual."
H.G. Wells, World Brain, 1938
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H.G. Wells
• Global encyclopedia with numerous “tentacles” and “ganglia”
• Secure ID mechanism so that everyone can “promptly and certainly be recognized”
• Elite class of technology “samurai” will guide the world’s progress
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Photo: Evan Brus
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Paul Otlet
• Creator of Universal Decimal Classification
• Founder of Mundaneum
• Author of Monde, Traité de documentation
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Paul Otlet
“The Universal Book, formed of all books, would become a kind of annex of the brain itself, a substrate of memory… ubiquitous and eternal.”
- Traité de documentation, 1934
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!
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Françoise Levie / The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World
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Vote-links
http://microformats.org/wiki/vote-links
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Vannevar Bush
• Science advisor to FDR
• President of Carnegie Institution
• Author of “As We May Think”
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“Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the Memex and there amplified.”
As We May Think
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As We May Think
• Associative “trails” linking one document to another
• Two-way links
• User-generated content
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Eugene Garfield
Founder of Science Citation Index
Inventor of citation ranking
Forefather of PageRank
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Doug Engelbart
• Former SRI Researcher
• Creator of oNLine System (NLS)
• Author of “Augmenting Human Intelligence”
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Doug Engelbart“Hunches, intangibles, and the human ‘feel for a situation’ usefully co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic aids.
- Augmenting Human Intellect, 1962
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Doug Engelbart
• 1968 NLS Demo
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Xerox PARC
Founded by Alan Kay and several early Engelbart collaborators
Mission: “The Architecture of Information”
Invented the GUI, precursors of the modern PC
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TextText
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Apple Hypercard
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Ted Nelson
• Coined the term “hypertext” (1965)
• Author of Literary Machines, Dream Machines, Computer Lib
• Creator of Xanadu
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• http://www.digibarn.com/collections/books/computer-lib/dm-cover.jpg
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Andries Van Dam
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http://www.cs.brown.edu/memex/ACM_HypertextTestbed/papers/HARTadj5in.jpg
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On Hypertext
• Transclusion to allow deep linking
• Bi-directional links to expose trails between documents
• Intellectual property controls
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Nelson-isms
TransclusionDocuverseStretchtext Zippered listsWindow sandwichesIndexing vortexesPart-pouncesTumblers
Collateral hypertext
HumbersThinkertoysFresh hyperbooksAnthological hyperbooks
Grand systems
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I Don’t Buy In
The Web isn’t hypertext, it’s DECORATED DIRECTORIES!
What we have instead is the vacuous victory of typesetters over authors, and the most trivial form of hypertext that could have been imagined…
There is an alternative.
Markup must not be embedded. Hierarchies and files must not be part of the mental structure of documents. Links must go both ways. All these fundamental errors of the Web must be repaired. But the geeks have tried to lock the door behind them to make nothing else possible.
We fight on. More later.
- Ted Nelson
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Andries Van Dam• Early collaborator with Nelson
• Created the first working hypertext systems:
• Hypertext Editing System (HES)
• File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS)
• Intermedia
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Intermedia
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Wendy Hall• Developed Microcosm at University
of Southampton in mid-1970s
• First open hypermedia system
• “Linkbases” instead of markup language
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Tim Berners-Lee
• Former researcher at CERN
• Built first version of Enquire in 1980
• Released WorldWideWeb in 1989
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Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages
by Alex Wright
http://alexwright.org/glut/
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Final thoughts
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Further readingH.G. Wells, “World Brain”
Teilhard de Chardin, Phenomenon of Man
Boyd Rayward, “Visions of Xanadu”
Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”
Ted Nelson, Literary Machines
Doug Engelbart, “Augmenting Human Intelligence”
Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web
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