Architecture of theWorld WideWeb - Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web - page 13

connected with the Internet and given easy-to-use interfaces as developed at Xerox
PARC, both temporal and spatial latencies were made low enough for ordinary users
to access the Internet. This convergence of technologies, the personal computer and
the Internet, is what allowed the Web to be implemented successfully and enabled
its wildfire growth, while previous attempts like NLS were doomed to failure as they
were conceived before the technological infrastructure to support them had matured.

2.1.3 The Modern World Wide Web

Perhaps due to its own anarchic nature, the IETF had produced a multitude of
incompatible protocols such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and Gopher (Postel and
Reynolds 1985; Anklesaria et al. 1993). While protocols could each communicate
with other computers over the Internet, there was no universal format to identify
information regardless of protocol. One IETF participant, Tim Berners-Lee, had
the concept of a “universal information space” which he dubbed the “World
Wide Web” (1992). His original proposal to his employer CERN brings his belief
in universality to the forefront, “We should work towards a universal linked
information system, in which generality and portability are more important than
fancy graphics and complex extra facilities” (Berners-Lee 1989). The practical
reason for Berners-Lee's proposal was to connect the tremendous amounts of data
generated by physicists at CERN together. Later as he developed his ideas he came
into direct contact with Engelbart, who encouraged him to continue his work despite
his work being rejected at conferences like ACM Hypertext 1991. 1
In the IETF, Berners-Lee, Fielding, Connolly, Masinter, and others spear-headed
the development of URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers), HTML (HyperText
Markup Language) and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). Since by being able
to reference anything with equal ease due to URIs, a web of information would
form based on “the few basic, common rules of 'protocol' that would allow one
computer to talk to another, in such a way that when all computers everywhere did
it, the system would thrive, not break down” (Berners-Lee 2000). The Web is a
virtual space for naming information built on top of the physical infrastructure of
the Internet that could move bits around, and it was built through specifications that
could be implemented by anyone: “What was often difficult for people to understand
about the design was that there was nothing else beyond URIs, HTTP, and HTML.
There was no central computer 'controlling' the Web, no single network on which
these protocols worked, not even an organization anywhere that 'ran' the Web. The
Web was not a physical 'thing' that existed in a certain 'place.' It was a 'space' in
which information could exist” (Berners-Lee 2000).
Theveryideaofa universal information space seemed at least ambitious, if
not de facto impossible, to many. The IETF rejected Berners-Lee's idea that any

1 Personal communication with Berners-Lee.