Web Fundamentals
A Bird’s-Eye View of the Web

Ted Nelson: computer pioneer
and technology philosopher.

• book “Computer Lib”
  • collection of texts, notes, drawings published in 1974
  • teaches computer tinkering and programming
• flip side: “Dream Machines”
  • visions on future computer applications
  • first written mention of hypertext

By hypertext I mean non-sequential writing—text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen.
As popularly conceived,
this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways.

Ted Nelson, Literary Machines (1980)

Nelson’s ideas were bigger than the Web,
but not necessarily as realistic.

• Project Xanadu
  • advanced hypertext, with features like transclusion
  • dubbed “the longest-running vaporware project”
• OpenXanadu
  • published in 2014 as “a working deliverable”
  • …on top of the Web

Douglas Engelbart: visionary inventor,
human–computer interaction pioneer.

• inventor of the computer mouse
• early developer of hypertext
  • strong proponent of computer networking
• brought the revolutionary Mother of All Demos
  • in 1968:
    • graphical interface
    • networking
    • hypertext
    • …

Wendy Hall: hypermedia pioneer,
founder of Web Science.

• inventor of the Microcosm hypermedia system
  • dynamic hypertext on a local computer
• executive director of Web Science Trust
  • train future generations of Web Scientists
• hugely influential in multimedia and hypermedia
  • former President of the ACM
  • former Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering

Tim Berners-Lee invented
the World Wide Web.

• Berners-Lee was working at CERN.
• He drafted Information Management: A Proposal

  goal

  facilitating information sharing

  needs

  heterogeneity

  decentralization

  live links

  …

• The first Web page came online in 1990.
  • accessible from anywhere in the world
  • any other page in the world can link to it

The world before the Web
was highly heterogeneous.

• Exchanging information was hard.
  • different hardware
  • different software
• Innovation was hard.
  • For which machines do we build?
  • For which operating systems do we build?

The Web strives to be universal
through independence of many factors.

• Anyone can use the Web, regardless of:

  hardware

  desktop

  phone

  tablet

  watch

  …

  software

  operating system

  browser

  app

  …

• Developers are free to innovate.
  • Build for the Web.
  • Standards provide interoperability.
• Unfortunately, this is not the default elsewhere.
  • App stores are a prominent counterexample.

CERN decided to make the Web
available royalty-free in 1993.

This is for everyone #london2012 #oneweb #openingceremony @webfoundation @w3c

Tim Berners-Lee July 27, 2012

Web technologies are standardized
by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

• The W3C brings together member organizations
  to create standards.
• Every member’s voice counts,
  preferably through consensus.
• Working groups publish recommendations,
  which are considered Web standards.
  • CSS
  • XML
  • RDF
  • …

Communication evolved together
with the Web.

• The Web is democratic.
  • everyone can read information
  • everyone can write information
• Blogs emerged as a medium to spread thoughts.
• The “Web 2.0” ideas made many users
  transition from consumers to prosumers.

Education evolved together
with the Web.

• The free encyclopedia Wikipedia started in 2001.
  • freely accessible knowledge for all
  • not always reliable though
• Massive Open Online Courses soon followed.
  • learning from top teachers and universities in the world
  • examples: Khan Academy, Coursera, …

Business evolved together
with the Web.

• Pizza Hut accepted online orders already in 1994.
• Amazon and many others exploit the long tail.

The Web brings freedom of expression
to everyone across the world.

• Anyone can say anything about anything.
• We all have our own spaces,
  so we don’t have to agree.
• We can link to opinions of others
  to discuss about them.

A generation of social platforms
helped people interact and share.

The Web brings permissionless innovation
at a global scale.

• Anyone can build anything for any reason.
• The technologies are open.
• You don’t need anyone’s permission
  to join the Web and launch a new idea.
  • This contrast with app stores.

Permissionless innovation has brought
unprecedented creativity to the world.

The Internet is a communication network between different machines in the world.

The Web is a layer of interlinked resources accessible through the Internet.

Which is the Internet
and which is the Web?

• the Internet
  • a global communication network interconnecting devices
  • technologies:
    • TCP
    • IP
    • DNS
    • …
• the Web
  • an information space on top of the Internet
  • technologies:
    • HTTP
    • HTML
    • URL
    • …

The Internet is to Web what
the telephone network is to fax.

The Internet contains more
than just the Web.

• on the Internet but not on the Web
  • e-mail
  • Skype
  • BitTorrent
  • VPN
  • …
• on the Web but not on the Internet
  • nothing (except for local/private resources)

Most people don’t understand or care about the difference… but you should!

Web linking is decentralized, implemented
as one-way links embedded in documents.

• essentials inside of HTML documents (not shared)
  • text
  • hyperlinks
• the rest outside of HTML documents (shareable)
  • styling (fonts, colors, …)
  • media (images, video, …)
  • scripts

The Web was the only hypertext system
simple enough to scale to the world.

Individual links are allowed to break
so the entire Web does not.

Tim Berners-Lee

The Web’s universality
helped accelerate its growth.

• HTTP and HTML were OS-independent.
  • Yet the server and browser were NeXT-specific.
• Support for other systems followed in 1992.
  • Notably Mosaic gave the Web a broader audience.
• It provides compatibility at an unprecedented scale.
  • The text-based browser Lynx is still developed and used.
  • Your phone can access websites created 20 years ago.

The number of websites started
growing at an explosive rate.

websites founded before 1995

The Web evolved together
with technology (and bandwidth).

1991

text (and links) only

1993

proposal for the <img> element

2002

video through the Flash player

2009

HTML5 <video> element

The Web’s architecture makes it hard
to locate specific content.

• Since the Web is decentralized,
  we cannot possibly know where everything is.
• Crawlers from search engines traverse the Web
  and create a centralized index of content.
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Baidu
  • …

Feeds let you discover new content
on websites you already know.

• An RSS feed contains the title and summary
  of the last entries on a (part of a) website.
  • specification co-authored by Aaron Swartz
• By regularly polling such a feed,
  your computer can tell you if there’s news.
  • no need to search/monitor the entire Web

Machines have only limited possibilities on the “human” Web.

• Browsers are operated by people.
• How can we let machines access information?
  • “What are the latest tweets tagged #WebWeWant?”
• How can we let machines perform actions?
  • “Click the button to send a tweet.”

Web APIs expose functionality
to an automated client.

• A Web API is a programmable interface
  to a certain Web platform.
• We can build client-side applications
  in- or outside the browser
  that leverage external functionality.
  • reuse of the Web’s port and protocol stack
  • starting point for building native versions of an app

The number of Web APIs has
grown tremendously since 2000.

number of Web APIs
indexed in ProgrammableWeb

Web APIs let machines execute scripts,
but not explore and process content.

• Machines do not “know” what Web content means.
  • Indexing webpages doesn’t imply understanding them.
• How can clients make sense of a webpage?
  • Can we somehow explain what is on there?
  • Can we help them make our lives easier?

Tim Berners-Lee and others proposed
a vision of intelligent Web agents.

• By adding annotations to existing pages,
  machines can interpret them and do things for us.
• A network of knowledge is created
  by linking different parts together.
  • Don’t know something? Follow its link to look it up!
• Our personal devices will combine
  data and services on our behalf.

Linked (Open) Data aims to bootstrap
the Semantic Web vision.

• The early Semantic Web suffered
  from a chicken-and-egg problem.
  • Nobody built applications, because there was no data.
  • Nobody published data, because there were no apps.
• Tim Berners-Lee proposed Linked Data:
  principles to follow to publish data semantically.
  • Let’s get data out—apps will follow.

Billions of Linked Data facts
are currently published on the Web.

• Google, Facebook, and others
  endorse usage of semantic annotations.
• However, the Semantic Web’s killer app
  seems still in the making…
  • Now we have the data… but where are the apps?
  • Where are the intelligent agents?

Who needs the Semantic Web when
we have a smartphone in our pockets?

• Apple’s Siri and Google Now
  process highly specific requests
  on the Apple and Google servers.
  • Your phone is not smart—its servers are.
• The Semantic Web is like the Web:
  decentralized and democratic.
  • Understanding the Web should
    not only belong to the happy few.

When websites are coded to browsers
rather than to standards, users suffer.

Unfortunately, best viewed with
is back from never gone.

Native apps essentially undo
all progress on device-independence.

• Before the Web, we needed specific software
  to consume any kind of information.
• Thanks to the Web, we only need a generic browser
  to consume the world’s knowledge.
  • This led to permissionless innovation.
• Once more, we need specific apps.
  • Innovation becomes expensive and exclusive.
  • Your browser works for you—an app not necessarily.

Big data, the Web of Things, the Internet:
it’s all very masculine.
Women are 50 per cent of the users,
so why aren’t they part of its design?

Wendy Hall

Centralization from multiple angles
is threatening the Web.

Technological decentralization can differ from practice:

• browser vendors
  • Only certain devices and software can access the Web.
• search engines
  • A few companies make or break websites.
• platforms (especially social networks)
  • You need a specific account to use the Web.

The current massive centralization
hurts diversity, innovation, and choice.

• If you can integrate one service…
  • will it be facebook.com or private-identity-provider.org?
• Developers depend on centralized platforms
  for data and identity.
  • …or they have to become such a platform themselves.
• People lose control of their data
  and cannot easily switch to other apps.
  • Innovation cannot attract locked-in customers.

Is this the Web
I went to jail for?

Ironically, permissionless innovation
even allows platforms that prevent it.

The Facebook founder has no intention of
allowing anyone to build anything on his platform
that does not have his express approval.

Having profited mightily from the Web’s openness,
he has kicked away the ladder that elevated him
to his current eminence.

John Naughton, The Guardian

Facebook tries to replace the open Web,
which enabled Facebook in the first place.

We must continue to say no
to a caged version of the Web.

Do we give governments
the power to censor the Web?

In December 2017, US regulators
voted to repeal Net Neutrality.

In Europe, the freedom to place
hyperlinks is under threat.

1986–2013

The Internet’s Own Boy

1925–2013

Let’s assemble the brightest minds
from business, technology, government,
civil society, the arts and academia
to tackle the threats to the Web’s future.

Tim Berners-Lee