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Could the Web Not be Invented Today?
An anonymous reader writes " Corante's
Copyfight has a
piece up about this new column
in the Financial Times by James Boyle celebrating (a few days on the
early side) the 15th
anniversary of
Berners-Lee's first
draft of a web page .
The hook is this question: What would happen if the Web were
invented today? From the article: 'What would a web designed by the World
Intellectual Property Organisation or the Disney Corporation have
looked like? It would have looked more like pay-television, or
Minitel, the French computer network. Beforehand, the logic of
control always makes sense. Allow anyone to connect to the network?
Anyone to decide what content to put up? That is a recipe for piracy
and pornography. And of course it is. But it is also much, much
more...The lawyers have learnt their lesson now...When the next
disruptive communications technology - the next worldwide web -
is thought up, the lawyers and the logic of control will be much more
evident. That is not a happy thought.'"
...we must kill ALL the lawyers.
Dog is my co-pilot.
of a great new way to share stuff on the net anonimously ! Wait a sec there's someone knocking on my front door. Be right back... "And in related news, inventor found lynched by a mob of record executives. Now sports."
Learn to separate truth from illusion. Because in this world, it's the hardest thing to do.
It's completely down to Tim Berners Lee that the internet is a free and open as it currently is. Preceding the Linux or the GNU, he was a real hacker creating something that he couldn't have known would change the world. He did it without profit in mind and as such it's been allowed to flourish.
:P
Sure, the military may have created the fundamentals, but Tim was the first to put them to good use
Just remember that networking was not a new phenomenom before the web.
We had Compuserve, Prodigy, Bix, eWorld, and probably a dozen other big ones that I can't recall. All of them got steam rolled by the internet because it was so 'disruptive'. One of the properties of being disruptive means upheaval and loss of a certain amount of control.
Perhaps google will introduce the next phase of communications through wireless gateways that are free, and put cell phone providers in the category of technological has beens...who really knows what will work and what will fail until it is done?
Without the invention of the "Web" the world of today wouldn't be as it is. Thinking about the question at hand can lead nowhere since noone knows what a world without the Web would look like today.
First, if there were no internet and someone were to "invent" it today, it would be very similar to the Internet that was created years ago. It wouldn't have much content aside from a few indexes and maybe some scientific or technical content.
If the internet were created today, none of us would be online. We'd still be doing all the tedious tasks like making phone calls to clients and friends, and using hardbound encyclopedias and journals to find information. Newspapers would be making a ton of money selling ad space and subscriptions. Television would probably have a lot more content related to the writers' and producers' interests rather than based on viewer feedback.
In short, if the Internet were invented today, it would not have reached us mere mortals yet. And there is no reason to think that an Internet created in 2005 would be significantly different or more advanced than the Internet created in 1974.
The Internet itself has changed the rules of intellectual property. Without it, the media conglomerates would not be in the tizzy that they currently are in. It is precisely because of the ease of broadcast that the Internet gives us that we have media content creators trying to find ways to use the law to restrict users. In very real terms, the Internet that we are talking about here is the one created 1999 by Shawn Fanning. Until the arrival of Napster, Internet piracy was a drop in the bucket. Now it is one of the most often used features of the Internet, and it is because of that initial software that media companies sat up and took notice of all the copyrighted bits being transmitted right under their noses.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
...well, at least this week.
The web couldn't be invented today because the lawyers learned their lesson... from the web? I've heard the "hindsight is 20/20" saying, but this is ridiculous. Further, why the hell are they talking about WIPO and the Disney corp? It took the brightest minds on the planet, found at places like CERN -- and research budgets of an astronomical scale that could only have been bankrolled by government agencies like the US Army -- to get where we got with the internet and the web. I have never even heard a suggestion that something like this could ever have come from a pile of douchebags like WIPO.
After reading this article, I wish I had found it in a magazine, so I could have the pleasure of throwing it in the trash. This is garbage.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
- Everything is free, yet nothing is free. (Compensation paradox)
- We don't know who you are, yet there is no privacy. (Identity paradox)
- Write multiple times, yet it still doesn't run everywhere. (Compatibility paradox)
- Code goes over the network, yet it's not mobile. (Boundary paradox)
- The Web is not decentralized enough, yet it is not centralized enough. (Responsibility paradox)
If you are interested, read Abandon the Web! Your attention and feedback is greatly appreciated.The lovely thing about truly disruptive technologies is that, at least initially, they are seen as not-very-good solutions to second-tier problems (here's Wikipedia on Chistensen's definition of a disruptive technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology ). This feature (not a bug!) can give good ideas the time to get a few steps out of the cradle before incumbent industries, their lawyers, and the political powers-that-be in their employ try to strangle them. It isn't much, but sometimes a little bit of a head start is all you can hope for.
"It's not a bear, it's a hamster. A really, really large hamster."
I just wish the rest of the world would show some goddamn RESPECT for the fact that fifteen years ago Tim Berners-Lee, AN AMERICAN, invented the Web while working at CERN, you guessed it, IN AMERICA.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too.
Pay for content. The revolution with the Web is that there is no limitations or anyone controlling the contents there. It used to be, with television, radio, and books, that only the select few producers were able to reach a large audience. Now this has changed to be determined by what you, YOU the reader and potential producer, have to say, and whether, or rather to what extent anyone's interested in it. Now anyone can read, and thanks to Google, anyone can find something they're looking for (as in it may not be what they want, but it will be what they need).
Had the web been created today by any media corporation or association of these, it would have been just another variation on the pay-for-content and "We produce, you consume" theme that is the bread and butter of the media companies today. They do not want to have any competition. And they do not want to surrender their control of the distribution channels.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
If electricity were discovered today, it would be deemed too dangerous for the public.
In the beginning there was the PLATO network which had a working prototype designed for mass-market which would have amortized itself within 5 years easily at $40/month service, including the rental of a bit-mapped graphics, touch screen, plasma displays. It had realtime multiuser games, even some multiuser 3D first person shooter games, as well as email, discussion fora (the origin of Ozzie's "Notes") and the ability for anyone to write programs for anyone else to run via the network. A single Cyber 760 benchmarked out at several thousand simultaneous users with 1/4 second response time. "Management" decided to focus on the higher profit margin corporate education market.
So I left PLATO and took up position as architect for the authoring system for the mass-market videotex experiment conducted by AT&T and Knight-Ridder News called "Viewtron" -- a service of the joint-venture company, Viewdata Corporation of America. They had done market research which showed that the thing people most wanted was discussion. Having been from PLATO this was no surprise and indeed it was obvious to me people wanted to be able to provide publications and software services to the public. But when I presented an architecture whose primary discipline was to treat the desktop computer as the host system nearest the user (ie: P2P in 1982) I was told by a decision-maker that "we see videotex as 'we the institutions providing you the consumer with information and services'" Yes that was what he said. He may have been trying to get my goat but that is in fact the direction they took things. In any event I was about to be told by the corporate authorities that my P2P telecomputing architecture, which would have provided a dynamically downloaded Forth graphics protocol in 1983 evolving into a distributed Smalltalk-like environment beginning around 1985, would be abandoned due to a corporate commitment to stick with Tandem Computers as the mainframe vendor -- a choice which I had asserted would not be adequate. (At least Postscript survived.) I was subsequently offered the head telecomputing software position at Prodigy by IBM and turned it down when they indicated they would not support my architecture either, due to a committment to limit merchant access to their network to only those who had a special status with the service provider (IBM/CBS/Sears). The distributed Smalltalk system was specifically designed to allow the sort of grassroots commerce now emerging in the world wide web. (Now that via AJAX people recognize JavaScript is similar to the Self programming language and the Common Lisp Object System there is some resurrection of the original vision.) But this wasn't in keeping with IBM's philosophy at that time since they had yet to be humbled by Bill Gates coup but already Gates had locked in his position as the bottleneck between Moore's Law and software by retaining ownership of MS DOS while it was being distributed on IBM's hardware.
Lest people think the government is the ultimate savior in all this -- I did make a run at developing this sort of service on my own nickle using PC hardware but was squashed by the U.S. government when it provided UUCP/Usenet service, via MILnet, to a XENIX-based competitor in San Diego and would not offer me the same subsidy. MILnet was, by law, not for public access. Rather it was exclusively for military use. My complaints to DoD investigators resulted in continual "We're looking into it." replies. By that time Usenet was taking off and I couldn't get a seed market to finance any further work.
What Berners-Lee did was admirable in that he aimed lower -- for the low hanging fruit of simple document presentation. The sacrifice of P2P was, however a bit much to sacrifice. I still think that should have remained the "primary discipline". Things are slowly recovering though.
Seastead this.
Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN in Switzerland when he invented the web. There would be absolutely no problem inventing it there today.
Perhaps it would have been much slower to penetrate the US market, but that would not mean it couldn't exist basically as it does now.
There have been recent articles here about how the US is slipping into a technical dark age. This is just one more example of how that's true.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
The internet is an extension of ideas that we already had. Bulletin boards allowed small groups of people to interact, particularly with things like MOOs/MUDs. Then CompuServe was alot like the internet before the internet really took off, despite being a commercially owned entity, and yes it was a bit like pay tv.
A disruptive Technology is one that "disrupts" the currently technology. Amazon.com was "disruptive technology" to strip malls. Strip malls were "disruptive technology" to department stores. And department stores were "disruptive technologies" to the old corner stores. In this sense, a WWW could be invented today. The majority of the population (including lawyers) can't predict disruptive technologies - so their creation can't be prevented.
After killing all lawyers, you're going to need a hell of a legal team...
Okay, so a philosopher, a philologist, and a philatelist walk into a bar...
At the time it was released (begining of the 80's), minitel was probably one of the most advanced and low cost electronic net in the world, it greatly helped many people to get acquainted with technology. And it had porn too.
Lack of evolution and internet competition killed it, but for 15 years I can't think of anything more or less competing with it anywhere in the world in terms of accessibility and richness of content. And it delivered for (almost) free ! The terminal was lended by France Telecom to anybody at no cost. You paid for the service, at the price of a (sometimes premium) communication. Not really cheap, but a strong incentive for sure.
For certain services, I still use it today, because minitel warrants the user he's talking to the right person (no MIM hack), and the price has no hidden traps.
Your comparaison with the french minitel is not fair, IMHO. If the internet would look like the minitel, it would be:
1) Cheaper
At that time, connections were charger per minute. The range for the minitel was between $0.05 and $2.00, the range for the internet started at $0.35. Addtionaly, the terminal was FREE.
2) More used
There was millions of minitel users in France, and only tens of thousands of internet ones.
3) Faster
Well, the minitel modem was only 1200-bps, while you could get a 9600-bps one for the internet. However, the route was direct and the pages much lighter. So the time-per-page was lower.
4) Styled
The minitel was a character terminal, black and white. Colors and graphics were introduced later. Same for the web. But you could get some effects.
5) More organised
The minitel had a single namespace (mainly 3615). Not a really good thing but definitively more organised and controled.
Finaly, the minitel could be connected to a PC (via serial). You could use it confortably from your PC or you could connect BBS. You could even host your own server. At that time, it was almost impossible on the internet.
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http://www.milliondollarscreenshot.com/
Million Dollar Screenshot
You are the ONLY one to have gotten the reference; Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part Two"
From act four;
ALL God save your majesty!
CADE I thank you, good people: there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord.
DICK The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
CADE Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since. How now! who's there?
Dog is my co-pilot.
So when did he change his name to Al Gore?
Open standards are part of this - they do a better job for customers than closed ones do. Remember, people tried this with various services. How big are MSN, AOL, Compuserve and all that now?
I predict that the current cellphone companies are going to be in big trouble in a few years, when the wireless technology catches up and provides a cheaper service.
[Not speaking for SunSITE, Metalab, ibiblio, or UNC].
1) Before the great Cambrian explosion of 90-92, only a few, simple internet applications existed - primarily telnet, smtp, ftp, and DNS. In a manner that would shock most members of the Dover school board, these applications envolved through a process of trial, error, and descent with modification.
When ITU attempted to replicate these applications through intelligent-design-by-committe, the species that formed in 84 proved immediately non-viable. The second creation in 88 improved many of the existing problems; it did, however, equip these second spawn with sets of long, sharp, pointy teeth, in the form of government mandates requiring all government purchases have protected habitats for the X-creatures to frolic in.
2) When the explosion happened around 90-92, when the phyla that shape almost every modern Internet application first appeared in their basic forms, (gopher and http for browsing, WAIS for search, archie for indexing, etc) the struggle against OSSification was at its very peak.
If they're cute and furry enough, teams of mammals can take down the pointest of teeth ("This is a UNIX system - I know this").
3) People have been concerned about protecting copyrighted materials since the very beginning. For WAIS was put together by Brewster Kahle's team as way of letting Dow Jones customers do full text searches using servers running on Thinking Machines supercomputers. Marking documents as not for copying was an issue. I remember bar conversations about this after the Cybrarians BOF at the Jan 92 Usenix.
4) One of the biggest reasons that the web took off is that Tim Berners-Lee is one of the nicest people ever. The web wasn't designed to make you serve your data in the way it wanted; it was designed to hook in and work with the data as it already was, and oh, by the way, if you create add a welcome.html file, you can hyperlink from all these words.
By keeping things open, keeping things free, and playing nice with everyone, the foundation for the second generation of web clients was laid.
5) Probably the most important reason for the cambrian explosion was the loosening of the Acceptable Use Policies on the backbone. Hmm *de*-regulation making things better. Whould have thunk it.
Simon
The big push to interconnect first came from E-mail. Business to business E-mail was a huge pain when GEnie didn't talk to MCImail. Businesses insisted that their vendors get interoperablity working. That's what finally made the competing services interconnect.