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When the Web Was Young (What went right, what went wrong)

by Dave Doolin on November 17, 2009 · 7 comments

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Think back to 1994… where were you? I was in my first year of graduate school. Reed Wade had written xnetlib a couple of years previously, which was pretty cool if you were interested in browsing numeral linear algebra software archives (I was fascinated at the time).

But really, I remember two things from 1994, one of which was this thing called the World Wide Web, which (evidently) had been creeping out of CERN for a few years. Mosaic was the browser of choice, until this thing called “Netscape” showed up.

Now, Netscape was pretty much like Mosaic, except for one thing: using Netscape, you could look at pictures from some other place on the internet. Rad!

I doubt Netscape had been released 10 minutes before people were posting porn, but that’s a story for a different day. (And a different blog.)

So, what?

Here’s the thing: the Web was designed to connect stuff together.

Nodes on the World Wide Web. Where's yours?

The Web wasn’t designed to deliver advertising or porn, to market products, to write online journals (we call ‘em blogs now), or pretty much anything else you’re probably using it for. It certainly wasn’t designed for SEO. Search engine development lagged web technology by years.

This is neither good nor bad. I’d argue that it’s good, for the most part.

But it’s still under-utilized with respect to the original notion: a web of interconnected documents, accessible by anyone.

Imagine being able to drill down into some topic, any topic, to any depth you like.

As a teenager fascinated with technology, I was inspired by Keith Laumer’s “A Trace of Memory,” a silly Science Fiction novela written almost 50 years ago. In that tale, what we know as photographs are described as being of infinite complexity. Zoom in, and you can count the blades of grass on a golf course. Zoom in more, you can count stomata on a single blade of grass. More zooming and you can count the cells, and so on.

Even at the time I knew that was more than faintly ridiculous: at infinite detail, the simulation becomes indistinguishable from reality.

But Trace of Memory is still a very entertaining tale, and parts of Laumer’s vision are coming true.

For example, think of blog post about an iPhone. There’s the (nowadays) usual links to The Apple Store nearest you, but also links technical specifications. The technical specifications could in turn link to hardware and software specification, and on down the line. Who supplied the plastic? The glass on the front? Where in the world did the sand for the glass come from? What’s the geological history of the sand? And on and on and on…

We’re part of the way there.

Where the Web went right

Mostly, everything.

One measure of success is ubiquity. The Web does as fine a job delivering “opt in squeeze pages” as it does delivering Wikipedia. Pr0n and public service.

Then again, houseflies are ubiquitous.

Another measure of success is utility. Given the number of new industries solely based on the Web, I’d say the Web is a smashing success.

Where the Web went wrong

Really, very little.

But here’s a couple of things anyway.

First, the Web was designed in a secure environment by scientists more interested in getting the job done than worrying about somebody else’s credit card number. By security, I mean “secure” in the sense of an environment where you could leave your wallet laying around, and not worry about it growing legs. So now we have to worry about hackers and crackers, spammers and scammers.

Second, we’ve created these digital systems of incredible complexity, which make finding information amazingly easy.

But we don’t use these systems near well-enough!

The key is to build your very own web, using WordPress. A web that draws in readers and search engines alike. Exactly how to do this, and how it helps you with SEO, is covered in upcoming articles.

In the meantime, What’s your biggest beef with the Web? How would you improve the Web? What are you doing on your blog or website to make the Web a better place?