The web, a multilingual encyclopedia Part 1

The web, a multilingual encyclopedia.

by Marie Lebert.

INTRODUCTION

"The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and inst.i.tutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind." (Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries, september 1998)

This book is a chronology in 31 chapters from 1974 to 2010. Many thanks to all those who are quoted here, for their time and their friends.h.i.+p. Unless specified otherwise, the quotes are excerpts from the interviews conducted by the author during several years and published in the same collection.

1974 > THE INTERNET "TOOK OFF"

[Summary]

The internet "took off" in 1974 with the creation of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn, fifteen years before the invention of the web. The internet expanded as a network linking U.S. governmental agencies, universities and research centers, before spreading worldwide in 1983. The internet got its first boost in 1990 with the invention of the web by Tim Berners-Lee, and its second boost in 1993 with the release of Mosaic, the first browser for the general public.

The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992 by Vinton Cerf to promote the development of the internet as a medium that was becoming part of our lives. There were 100 million internet users in December 1997, with one million new users per month, and 300 million users in December 2000.

The internet "took off" in 1974 with the creation of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn, fifteen years before the invention of the web.

# A new medium

The internet expanded as a network linking U.S. governmental agencies, universities and research centers, before spreading worldwide in 1983.

The internet got its first boost in 1990 with the invention of the web by Tim Berners-Lee, and its second boost in 1993 with the release of Mosaic, the first browser for the general public.

Vinton Cerf founded the Internet Society (ISOC) in 1992 to promote the development of the internet as a medium that was becoming part of our lives. When interviewed by the French daily Liberation on 16 January 1998, he explained that the network was doing two things. Like books, it could acc.u.mulate knowledge. But, more importantly, it presented knowledge in a way that connected it with other information whereas, in a book, information stayed isolated.

Because the web was easy to use with hyperlinks going from one doc.u.ment to the next, the internet could now be used by anyone, and not only by computer literate users. There were 100 million internet users in December 1997, with one million new users per month, and 300 million users in December 2000.

# A worldwide expansion

North America was leading the way in computer science and communication technology, with significant funding and cheap computers compared to Europe. A connection to the internet was much cheaper too.

In some European countries, internet users needed to surf the web at night (including the author of these lines), when phone rates by the minute were cheaper, to cut their expenses. In late 1998 and early 1999, some users in France, Germany and Italy launched a movement to boycott the internet one day per week, as a way to force internet providers and phone companies to set up a special monthly rate. This action paid off, and providers began to offer "internet rates".

In summer 1999, the number of internet users living outside the U.S. reached 50%.

In summer 2000, the number of internet users having a mother tongue other than English also reached 50%, and went on steadily increasing then. According to statistics regularly published on the website of Global Reach, a marketing consultancy promoting internationalization and localization, they were 52.5% in summer 2001, 57% in December 2001, 59.8% in April 2002, 64.4% in September 2003 (including 34.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 29.4% Asians), and 64.2% in March 2004 (including 37.9% non- English-speaking Europeans and 33% Asians).

Broadband became the norm over the years. Jean-Paul, webmaster of the hypermedia website cotres.net, summarized things in January 2007: "I feel that we are experiencing a 'floating' period between the heroic ages, when we were moving forward while waiting for the technology to catch up, and the future, when high-speed broadband will unleash forces that just begin to move, for now only in games."

# The internet of the future

The internet of the future could be a "pervasive" network allowing us to connect in any place and at any time on any device through a single omnipresent network.

The concept of a "pervasive" network was developed by Rafi Haladjian, founder of the European company Ozone, who explained on its website in 2007 that "the new wave would affect the physical world, our real environment, our daily life in every moment. We will not access the network any more, we will live in it. The future components of this network (wired parts, non wired parts, operators) will be transparent to the final user. The network will always be open, providing a permanent connection anywhere. It will also be agnostic in terms of applications, as a network based on the internet protocols themselves." We do look forward to this.

As for the content of the internet, Timothy Leary, a visionary writer, described it in 1994 in his book "Chaos & Cyber Culture"

as gigantic gla.s.s towers containing the whole world information, with free access, through the cybers.p.a.ce, not only to all books, but also to all pictures, all movies, all TV shows, and all other data. In 2011, we are not there yet, but we are getting there.

1990 > THE INVENTION OF THE WEB

[Summary]

The World Wide Web was invented in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), Geneva, Switzerland. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee networked doc.u.ments using hypertext. In 1990, he developed the first HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) server and the first web browser. In 1991, the web was operational and radically changed the way people were using the internet.

Hypertext links allowed us to move from one textual or visual doc.u.ment to another with a simple click of the mouse. Information became interactive, thus more attractive to many users. Later on, this interactivity was further enhanced with hypermedia links that could link texts and images with video and sound. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in October 1994 to develop protocols for the web.

The World Wide Web was invented in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), Geneva, Switzerland, who made the internet accessible to all.

# How the web started

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee networked doc.u.ments using hypertext. In 1990, he developed the first HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) server and the first web browser. In 1991, the web was operational and made the internet accessible to all. Hypertext links allowed us to move from one textual or visual doc.u.ment to another with a simple click of the mouse. Information became interactive, thus more attractive to many users. Later on, this interactivity was further enhanced with hypermedia links that could link texts and images with video and sound.

Developed by NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) at the University of Illinois (USA) and distributed free of charge in November 1993, Mosaic was the first browser for the general public, and contributed greatly to the development of the web. In early 1994, part of the Mosaic team migrated to the Netscape Communications Corporation to develop a new browser called Netscape Navigator. In 1995, Microsoft launched its own browser, the Internet Explorer. Other browsers were launched then, like Opera and Safari, Apple's browser.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in October 1994 to develop interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, other tools) for the web, for example specifications for markup languages (HTML, XML and others). It also acted as a forum for information, commerce, communication and collective understanding. In 1998, the section Internationalization/Localization gave access to some protocols for creating a multilingual website: HTML, base character set, new tags and attributes, HTTP, language negotiation, URLs and other identifiers including non-ASCII characters, etc.

# Tim Berners-Lee's dream

Pierre Ruetschi, a journalist for the Swiss daily "Tribune de Geneve", asked Tim Berners-Lee on 20 December 1997: "Seven years later, are you satisfied with the way the web has evolved?". He answered that, if he was pleased with the richness and diversity of information, the web still lacked the power planned in its original design. He would like "the web to be more interactive, and people to be able to create information together", and not only to be information consumers. The web was supposed to become a "medium for collaboration, a world of knowledge that we share."

In an essay posted on his webpage, Tim Berners-Lee wrote in May 1998: "The dream behind the web is of a common information s.p.a.ce in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished.

There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was online, we could then use computers to help us a.n.a.lyze it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together." (excerpt from "The World Wide Web: A very short personal history")

# The web 2.0

According to Netcraft, a company tracking data on the internet, the number of websites went from one million (April 1997) to 10 million (February 2000), 20 million (September 2000), 30 million (July 2001), 40 million (April 2003), 50 million (May 2004), 60 million (March 2005), 70 million (August 2005), 80 million (April 2006), 90 million (August 2006) and 100 million (November 2006), with a growing number of personal websites and blogs.

The term "web 2.0" was invented in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly, a publisher of computer books, as a t.i.tle for a series of conferences he was organizing. The web 2.0 may begin to answer Tim Berners-Lee's dream as a web based on community and sharing, with many collaborative projects across borders and languages.

Fifteen years after the invention the web, Wired stated in its August 2005 issue that less than half of the web was commercial, with the other half being run by pa.s.sion. As for the internet, according to the French daily Le Monde dated 19 August 2005, its three powers -- ubiquity, variety and interactivity -- made its potential use quasi infinite.

Robert Beard, a language teacher at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, and the founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries in 1995, wrote as early as September 1998: "The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and inst.i.tutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind."

1990 > THE LINGUIST LIST

[Summary]