Outline of the Lecture

 Quiet Revolution of the Web

 History of the Internet
 Web as a Source of Information
 Web as a Means of Communication
 Web as Entertainment
 Web as a Venue for Commerce
 Issues with Web Transactions
 Core Web Technologies
 Emerging Trends

The Quiet Revolution

The advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) ushered in a quiet revolution all over the
world. The Web radically changed the way we communicate and do business. In this
lecture we will analyze the power and impact the web has over our lives. We will
describe the key technologies that sustain the Web and in conclusion discuss the
emerging trends and new directions of Web related research and development.

Some ways we use the Web in our daily life:

 Send / receive e-mail, documents, pictures, music, video

 Get news - newspapers, newsgroups
 Buy / sell - almost anything
 Travel arrangements - airlines, hotels
 Fill prescriptions
 Banking - pay bills
 Play Games

History of the Internet

To understand the growth of the web it is useful to study the history of the internet,
especially in terms of the societal causes and their technological effects. Nowadays,
we use the terms the Internet and the Web interchangeably. But the Internet predates
the Web by several decades.

We can divide the history of the Internet into three phases. In the first phase there was
the development of the infrastructure of the Internet. This included the construction of
the network of cables and routers and the establishment of protocols for the
transmission of data across the network. In the second phase, there was a tremendous
growth in the number of applications that made it easy to send, receive, and search for
information. The second phase culminated in the creation of the World Wide Web and
software (browsers) that allowed easy access to the Web. The third phase began with
the commercialization of the Web and the continued improvement in the hardware
infrastructure and the supporting software.

The key concept of transmitting data across a network is embodied in the packet
switching theory. In essence, to send a document over the internet - the document is
split into packets, labeled, and then sent with other packets from other documents
through routers. Each router examines the destination code and decides which router
to send the packet to next. There are many alternative routes for a packet and packets
from the same document need not take the same path to reach the destination. At the
destination end the packets are assembled together to reconstruct the document. There
is no dedicated path to transmit data instead there is a redundancy of paths which
safeguards the network from a single point of failure.

In the mid to late 80's most computers in universities and research labs in the US and
Western Europe were on the internet. One could remotely login to computers
using telnet or retrieve files from public servers through ftp. Several useful software
infrastructure were developed to make access to the internet easier. Archie was a
system that archived indexes of files available on public servers and which could be
queried. A similar service was provided by Wais that allowed a user to find an article
based on what it contained. This was a precursor of our search engines like Google.
Another search tool that hit the scene was Gopher. Gopher was menu driven and
retrieved and displayed text files.

The person most responsible for the World Wide Web is Tim Berners-Lee who was
then working at CERN. He envisioned a global hypertext space where documents
could be identified by a unique identifier (URL) and documents could link to other
documents in this space using that identifier. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
was developed that allowed these links to be embedded within documents. To read
these documents and follow the links special software were developed. In
1993 Mosaic and Lynx were introduced to the internet community. Mosaic allowed
graphical rendition of web pages whereas Lynx only rendered text. The following
year saw the beginning of large scale commercialization of the web.

Brief Time Line of the History of the Web

 1957: USSR launched the Sputnik and in response the USA created the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to establish a lead in US science
and technology.
 1961: Leonard Kleinrock published the first paper on packet switching theory.
  1969: Advanced Research Projects (ARPA) created the first version of the
Internet. It connected four computers - UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, University of
Utah, and Standford Research Institute.
 1971: e-mail program invented
 1972: First e-mail on ARPANET @ character used
 1973: First international connections to ARPANET (Norway and UK)
 1977: Apple II desktop computer introduced
 1978: TCP/IP formalized
 1980: First major virus brings ARPANET to its knees
 1981: BITNET (Because It's Time or Because It's There Network) was a
network of educational sites separate from the Internet, but e-mail was freely
exchanged between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs, the most popular form
of e-mail discussion groups originated on BITNET. BITNET machines were
usually IBM mainframes running the VMS operating system.
 1983: Domain names invented
 1984: ARPANET connected around 1000 hosts but it required sponsorship of
the US government.
 1985: First .com and .edu domains registered
 1986: NSFnet was established through funding from NSF.
 1989: First commercial e-mail
 1990: NSFnet became the predominant network of computers. World Wide
Web invented
 1992: Coordination of NSFnet was turned over to an international
organization Internet Society (ISOC).
 1993: Mosaic Web browser
 1994: First major e-mail spam
 1996: Netscape 2 and 3, Explorer 3
 1997: Netscape 4, Explorer 4
 1998: W3C standards for Web

References: An Abridged Time Line

Web as a Source of Information

The web is like an online library and more. It is a great source of information as well
as disinformation. Newspapers, journals, and books can be accessed online. You can
do your research on the web without actually visiting a library. For that you need to
learn how to use search engines effectively. Since most web pages are not reviewed, it
is your responsibility to check the credibility of the author and the veracity of the
information. Here are some sources of information:
 Daily Newspapers: You can get the daily newspaper from any country of the
world. You can read differing viewpoints, filter out their bias, and have an
informed opinion.
o Newspapers Online
o Newspapers in All Countries
 Journals: You can subscribe to any journal from a professional society. Most
of these require membership and are fee based.
 Electronic Books: You can download electronic versions of books and either
print them out or read them in digital form.
o Gutenberg Project has over 18,000 books online
o Classic Books
 References: You can refer to encyclopedias or dictionaries. Encyclopedia
Britannica and the Oxford English Dictionary are fee based, whereas there are
other references that are free like the Columbia Encyclopedia or the Webster
Dictionary.
o Encyclopedia Britannica
o Columbia Encyclopedia
o Wikipedia - a community based free encyclopedia.
o Oxford English Dictionary
o Merriam-Webster Dictionary
 Education
o Online Courses: Various universities now offer courses online. You can
hone your knowledge in any subject from the comfort of your home.
o Art Galleries
 Travel: You can make travel arrangements - book an airline flight, reserve a
hotel room and rental car, and get weather and travel advisory for your
destination.
o Priceline Travel Site
o Expedia Travel Site
o Orbitz Travel Planner
o World Weather from BBC
o National Weather Service