the web: the 8th medium newest mass medium. tim berners-lee creator of world wide web compared to...
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The Web: the 8th Medium
Newest Mass Medium
Tim Berners-Lee
• 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
• Web site• Web page• Browsing• Server
• Internet• Cyber-• Cyberspace• William Gibson
Web limitations
• Bandwidth• Music and video
limitations• Cable and
telephone wiring
Information highway
• 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
• 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
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