Week 3 '....and what's the World Wide Web?'

Introduction

"It has become common to refer to the Internet and the World Wide Web as if they were pretty much the same thing. As we have seen this is not the case. The Internet is a system of hardware and software which enables the connection of multiple computers. The Web is an application that makes use of this functionality, just as email, Instant Messaging and other applications do. Accessed through clients named web browsers, the Web is a series of 'hypertext' documents all linked to each other to form a 'web' of information.

However, it is the World Wide Web that constitutes the everyday 'public face' of the Internet, and which permeates our perception and cultural understandings of it." (Leaver, 2010)

Pasted from <http://lms.curtin.edu.au/courses/1/305033-Vice-Chancello-111877403/content/_1253702_1/dir_Web101.zip/Web101/1.2.html> 15th March, 2011

REFLECTION: I think one of the reasons that people confuse these two terms or use them interchangeably is that both 'net' and 'web' have the same connotation for most of us, visually at least. Appearance and function are two different things so in this case the 'Internet' is the structure (and function) that the 'Web' runs on, and the Web is the application, delivery and presentation of information across the 'net'. Although Internet describes the function well, and www is a catchy and familiar term, WebPedia, WebSphere, Web-World, or World Wide Peadia would have been more aptly descriptive of the www!

Instructions

In this section we are going to examine the history and technologies behind the World Wide Web and the implications of hypertext on our undertsandings of information and writing.

image: 

http://www.adcet.edu.au/Cats/Technology_and_Facilities/web_Design.chpx

WWW in Plain English! Courtesy of Commoncraft

Part One - A Little More History

The ideas behind the Web had been fermenting in various ways since the end of the Second World War. The notion of an easily accessible and internally linked repository of information was first touted in the writings of Vannevar Bush in a 1945 article entitled 'As We May Think'.

By the 1960s, computing technology had developed to the point where the idea of networking computers was now possible. In 1968 researcher Doug Engelbart, working on a project humbly entitled 'The Augmentation of the Human Intellect', had developed the first working mouse, bit-mapped computer screens and, most importantly for the development of the Web, 'Hypertext': (Video Duration 8 Mins.)


Where have we come: Adam Curtis - The Medium and the Message


Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.co.uk