Book Review of Weaving the Web

1
Book Review of Weaving the Web

• GUIR
• UC Berkeley
• Jason I. Hong

2
Book Summary

• Where did the web come from?
• Where are we going?
• Where should we be going?
• How are we getting there?

3
The Early Days

• Combine two powerful ideas
• Hypertext
• Internet
• Simple philosophy
• Universal way of addressing info
• Universal protocol for xferring info
• Uniform way of representing hypertext
• Completely decentralized
• Rejected Names
• The Information Mine (TIM)
• Mine of Information (MOI)
• Information Mesh

4
Obstacles

• Many obstacles along the way
• "Universal" to "Uniform" in URL
• Different philosophies
• no dangling links
• why Internet?
• web just another information source
• "It's on Mosaic"
• Rejected paper at Hypertext '91
• Many obstacles still
• Privacy
• Credibility
• Local laws, global web

5
W3C
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revmade href"mailtomarkm_at_caplet.com"
title"Mark S. Miller"gt ltMETA NAME"description"
CONTENT"Udanax.com Enfiladic Hypertext"gt ltMETA
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• Basic W3C operation
• For every problem, define a new protocol or
  standard to handle it, providing mechanism not
  policy
• Examples
• Privacy (P3P)
• Restrict access to content (PICS)
• Uniform extens. data format (XML)
• Describes XML bits (RDF)
• Synchronized media (SMIL)
• Scripts and documents (DOM)
• Graphics for all devices (SVG)
• Will it ever be "good enough" end?!

6
Some Future Goals

• The Semantic Web
• Machine-understandable web
• XML RDF vs "Screen-Scraping"
• Schema for machine-understandable content
• Make it easier for agents to inference
• Data usable across different apps
• Groupware
• Richer semantics for debates
• "Agree", "Disagree", "Clarification"
• More tools for creation
• Allow everyone to create a page as easily as
  viewing

lt?xml version"1.0"?gt lt?xmlstylesheet
type"text/css2" href"jbalbum.css"?gt ltpagegt ltTitl
eBar XML-Link"LINK" Role"HTML" Show"EMBED"
href"title.html"/gt ltalbumgt ltartistgtJackson
Brownelt/artistgt lttitlegtRunning on
emptylt/titlegt lttracklistgt lttrackgtRunning on
emptylt/trackgt lttrackgtThe Roadlt/trackgt
lttrackgtRosielt/trackgt lttrackgtYou love the
thunderlt/trackgt lttrackgtCocainelt/trackgt
lttrackgtShaky townlt/trackgt lttrackgtLove needs a
heartlt/trackgt lttrackgtNothing but
timelt/trackgt lttrackgtThe load-outlt/trackgt
lttrackgtStaylt/trackgt lt/tracklistgt
ltlabelgtAsylum Recordslt/labelgt
ltyeargt1977lt/yeargt lt/albumgt lthtmlimg
src"running.jpg"/gt ltFooter XML-Link"LINK"
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gegt
7
Some Lessons and Questions

• Few problems were technical
• Perseverance pays
• Powerful ideas can be simple
• Simple ideas can be powerful
• In retrospect, obvious
• Many communities saying "couldn't be done" or
  "shouldn't be done this way"
• Greatest work was in convincing people
• What can we as a research community learn from
  this?
• How can we make our research environment at
  Berkeley better?

8
Comments

• Excellent book
• Excellent book for introspection
• Especially good for our community
• Not as understandable for layperson
• HCI
• Vague on interfaces interaction techniques
• Files, folders, links all URIs
• Browser, news reader, email unify?
• Every bit of human info online
• "If it isn't on the web it doesn't exist"
• Ephemeral ideas, meeting notes, etc
• Have to make lots of things explicit
• Doesn't address how to comprehend all of this
  information

9
A Comment on Amazon.com

• "What the heck? I thought Al Gore invented the
  Internet! This Berners-Lee guy must be a
  Republican."