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