English: Seven key layers of the internet are illustrated,
showing how users are connected to content (ie, web pages) served by content
providers. Significant milestones are highlighted in columns on the left and
right, showing key contributions made by some of the instrumental people
involved in inventing and developing the technology. Listed on the left side
are the highlighted rudimentary advances. Listed on the right side are the more
refined advances that helped to enable major breakthroughs. For example, while
computers were around since the 1940s, it was not until the advent of
inexpensive personal computers in the mid-1970s that the Internet revolution
could be enabled. These two columns can be thought of as the "first
wave" and the "second wave" in construction toward the internet.
A network is formed when multiple computers are linked
together. The Internet is the formation consisting of a 'network of networks',
enabled globally through a standard Internet Protocol (IP). The World Wide Web
was a significant advance in accessing information on the Internet, by
implementing the HyperText Transfer Protocol (http). But even the Web was in
want of an engaging User Interface, and this was provided by the web browser.
Up through the late 1990s, browsing the web was frequently frustrating when
trying to find specific content. This problem was solved by significant
advances in the search engine, specifically with the advent of Google in 1998
and their backlink "voting" algorithm for ranking page relevance. Content
in specific webpages, coded in HyperText Markup Language (html), is directly
accessible in the Web. For this reason, the Search Engine layer is marked with
an asterisk (*). But if content cannot be found by a user, then this is
indistinguishable from that content not existing, from the perspective of that
user. (Content can also be accessed without using a browser nor the Web, as was
the norm prior to the invention of the Web, but this is no longer typically
done by the average user.) Solving the search problem was a critical step in
the creation of a highly usable internet. 1976 could be taken as the first
singular point in this computer revolution timeline, where the devices started
to make great headway into the home, and 1998 can be seen as the culminating
layer where the search problem became mostly solved. The web was then engaging
and very easily usable. Maturation of these seven layers then set the stage for
subsequent revolutions, such as YouTube and Social Networking. That mature
version was later referred to as Web 2.0, so this diagram can be seen as
identifying the layers and milestones accomplished in the creation of "Web
1.0".
Layers are labeled in the plural when a multitude of
elements exist within that layer, versus just one (such as one Internet) or
only several (as with search engines). Note that 'content' here is used in the
plural, as there are literally trillions of webpages. At the bottom of these
layers is the user, interfacing with their computer. At the top is the content.
So the internet is a system that connects users to content presented by its
creators. When providers of content are users themselves, then the connection
is what is known as peer-to-peer. The path used by creators to upload their
content is similar to the path for users in accessing the content. A more
complete diagram could be shown in the geometry of the letter lambda: Λ,
depicting a direct connection with a content creator located at their computer
at the base of one leg, and the user at their computer at the base of the other
leg. But a strictly vertical geometry is depicted in this diagram for the sake
of simplicity.
A distinction between Web 2.0 versus Web 1.0 is that the
early version of the internet had very few content creators, whereas
applications like social media has enabled exponential growth in the numbers of
users who are also content creators.
A timeline could be identified as:
pre-1971 - Infrastructure building,
1971 - Internetworking made useful with the "killer
app" of email,
1991 - Internet made functional with the public debut of the
World Wide Web (50 years after the first Turing-complete computer by Zuse, 20
years after email),
1993 - Internet made engaging with the rich graphic
interface of Mosaic,
1998 - Internet made practical with Google solving relevant
search, thereby making accessible large portions of the internet that had been
unknown to users.
Quote:
“ There
are two ages of the Internet - before Mosaic, and after. The combination of Tim
Berners-Lee's Web protocols, which provided connectivity, and Marc Andreesen's
browser, which provided a great interface, proved explosive. In twenty-four
months, the Web has gone from being unknown to absolutely ubiquitous. ”
—A Brief History of Cyberspace, Mark Pesce, ZDNet, October
15, 1995
“ "In
the Web's first generation, Tim Berners-Lee launched the Uniform Resource
Locator (URL), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and HTML standards with
prototype Unix-based servers and browsers. A few people noticed that the Web
might be better than Gopher.
In the second generation, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina
developed NCSA Mosaic at the University of Illinois. Several million then
suddenly noticed that the Web might be better than sex.
In the third generation, Andreessen and Bina left NCSA to
found Netscape..."
”
—Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld, August 21, 1995, Vol. 17, Issue
34.[1]
(The above quotes were published three years prior to the
advent of Google's breakthrough in search.)
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