Architecture of theWorld WideWeb - Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web - page 8

Chapter 2
Architecture of the World Wide Web
All the important revolutions that leap into view must be
preceded in the spirit of the era by a secret revolution that is not
visible to everyone, and still less observable by contemporaries,
and that is as difficult to express in words as it is to understand.
G.W.F. Hegel (1959)
In order to establish the relative autonomy of the Web as a subject matter, we
recount its origins and so its relationship to other projects, both intellectual such
as Engelbart's Human Augmentation Project, as well as more purely technical
projects such as the Internet (1962). It may seem odd to begin this topic, which
involves very specific questions about representation and meaning on the Web, with
a historical analysis of the Web. To understand these questions we must first have
an understanding of the boundaries of the Web and the normative documents that
define the Web. The Web is a fuzzy and ill-defined subject matter - often considered
a ill-defined 'hack' by both academic philosophers and computer scientists - whose
precise boundaries and even definition are unclear. Unlike some subject matters
like chemistry, the subject matter of the Web is not necessarily very stable, like a
'natural kind,' as it is a technical artifact subject to constant change. So we will take
the advice of the philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon, “Instead of starting
from the individuality of the technical object, or even from its specificity, which is
very unstable, and trying to define the laws of its genesis in the framework of this
individuality or specificity, it is better to invert the problem: it is from the criterion
of the genesis that we can define the individuality and the specificity of the technical
object: the technical object is not this or that thing, given hic et nunc , but that which
is generated” (1958). In other words, we must first trace the creation of the Web
before attempting to define it, imposing on the Web what Fredric Jameson calls
“the one absolute and we may even say 'transhistorical' imperative, that is: Always
historicize!” (1981). Only once we understand the history and significance of the
Web, will we then proceed to dissect its components one-by-one, and attempt to
align them with certain still-subterranean notions from philosophy.