You may click on any of these highlighted topics to skip directly to that section:
A Global Network. The Internet is a massive global network of computers and devices: a network of networks. At base, it is a somewhat anarchic agglomeration of computers, each able to communicate with one another via a common set of robust communication protocols. The main two protocols, IP (Internet Protocol, for addressing) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, for chopping data up into packets) were developed decades ago under various Cold War funding regimes. The protocols were designed to create a fault-tolerant communications mechanism, able to withstand catastrophic failure (nuclear attack) of any portion of the network without loss of information.
Using Client-Server Architecture. The entire network is built upon a client-server architecture. That is, each program used to "navigate" the Net has two "halves." The two parts both use a communications protocol which is "superimposed" on the underlying TCP/IP to transfer information between client and server. When you are reading this document, you are using a Web client (called a browser) to ask a Web server to send you information. When this information is passed between the two Web programs, it is using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), which "rides" on top of TCP/IP. There are many different tools used to pass information over the Net, and a variety of protocols to accomplish these tasks. For example, file transfer programs use FTP (file transfer protocol), gopher programs the gopher protocol, etc. If you're interested in learning more, I've included a link to a comprehensive, albeit outdated tutorial, as well as to a list of Internet book reviews.
That is Exploding. For many years, the Net had been the near-exclusive province of government and educational institutions, with a diverse and anarchic culture to match. However, in the past few years, the Net's growth has exploded from a geeky libertarian backwater into an emerging social and economic force. This explosion may be attributed largely to the permeation of the computer into the American experience and the pioneering efforts of a few software producers in making the Net more "user friendly."
The Net's staggering growth may nearly merit of the hype heaped upon it. Because of the distributed nature of the network, it is difficult to find precise statistics for the size of the Net, but conservative estimates place the Net at 20 million users worldwide with a 8% growth rate per month . One portion of the Net, the World Wide Web, although introduced only two years ago, already has 8 million users and is growing 16% per month. [1] According to a survey reported by some of the Internet founders, as of October 1994, there were 7.8 million people who can provide Internet services, 13.5 million who can use these services, and 27.5 million users who can exchange electronic mail across the networks. It is important to remember that this is an October, 1994 survey, because the growth has been exponential, with a doubling of the population approximately every year, for the past six years.[2] In terms of just the World Wide Web segment, Sun Microsystems reports there are now more than 27,000 Web sites, with the population doubling every 53 days.[3]
And moving towards commercialism. With this explosion, there has been a redirection in the "feel" of the Net. As it has become more popular, it has become more commercial, with the rise in the ".com" domain skyrocketing in the past two years. This commercial upswing has also been felt in the financial services sector. According to the American Banker, "there are an estimated 398 financial services firms with registered domains (net "addresses") on the Internet, an increase of 197% from 1994."[4]
What is the Web? How does it work?An easy-to-use interface to the Internet. The Web, short for World Wide Web, is a major force driving this expansion and redirection. The Web is simply a collection of protocols that allows the transmission of hypertext documents written in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). These documents may have embedded links to images, sounds, movies, and importantly, to any other location in the Web. Some have seized upon this facility to provide many different media to recharacterize the Web as a "distributed hypermedia environment." It is the "dynamic linking" ability of any one Web document to any other than gave rise to the term "web."
The Web was the brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee and others at CERN in Switzerland, but has been popularized by Marc Andreessen, a 24 year old whiz kid who started a graphical Web project (Mosaic) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Andreessen then went on to found, with former Silicon Graphics CEO Jim Clark, Netscape Communications Corporation, now the dominant player in the Web field. Netscape has worked effectively to commercialize the Web with "secure" servers and encryption regimes to facilitate commerce in the insecure environment of the Internet.
But not the last... Already, there are several additional regimes in the works to bring "virtual" space to networked communications. Two of the main contenders are VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language), and Hot Java. Silicon Graphics has a pre-release version of a VRML browser it is working on, and Sun similarly has been pushing its HotJava browser technology. The last word is clearly not yet in, but it remains to be seen if these other applications are commercially significant.
What is hypertext? How do I read this paper?
Read it the way you'd like to. Hypertext is a way of providing information nonlinearly, such that a reader may decide to branch to any potential path. The reader can "jump" from any place in a document to any of a choice of locations, and may continue on from there to still more. It can be easy to get lost in the "Web," but the URL's (Uniform Resource Locators) of the documents should help you understand where you are, and where you would go if you clicked on a hypertext link. In the Netscape 1.1N browser, look to the bottom left of the screen to get an idea of where the next link jumps to. If you ever need to retrace your steps, you can click the "back" button (top left) to move back one link, or use the "Go" menu to get a listing of some of the documents you've visited and jump back several steps. Once you have followed a link, it should appear in a different highlit color when you see it again.
There's no linear flow. The very nature of the medium precludes a direct linear reading of the paper. Although hypertext documents may be highly structured, and even hierarchical at times, they are almost impossible to read front to back. In a sense, no two readers can ever have the same "experience" reading the paper, since there are a nearly infinite series of paths and sources that may be accessed from the "web page." Even the same reader can read the document several different ways. Because parts of the document may be cross-linked, the same topic may be "present" in several different areas. Finally, it is doubtful that any reader would ever read the "whole" document, since the hyperlinked nature can make that nearly physically impossible.
But it's strictly organized. In order to rationalize the layout of the paper and make it more readable, I include a hyperlinked summary of the topics at the top of each "page," in addition to a hyperlinked table of contents. At the bottom of each page is an opportunity to continue to the "next" page or to return to the table of contents. I provide citations and "hypernotes" on a separate page. Since numbering becomes a bit strained under a "hyper" regime, I renumber the footnotes for each page.
Hypertext documents are the ultimate in "executive summaries." One of the earliest truisms to emerge from online publication is the realization that information is competing for a scarce resource: attention. At the current level of human and computer development, it is difficult to read screen after screen of text effectively. Therefore, good hypertext authoring style prizes terse explanations, with links to ever-deeper discussions. Well-crafted hypertext should be easily scannable, and readily digestible, with eye-catching icons and headings to guide the reader. Of course, law papers should have deep analysis and thoughtful consideration. Cognizant of the tension between these two goals, I have tried to strike an effective balance by investigating the many information resources currently available to provide a series of "executive summaries" of the important ones. Where applicable, I provide links to more in-depth factual sources.
What is the scope of this paper?
I'm an analytical "intelligent agent." The "executive summary" theme is a natural introduction to one of the most important aspects of the Net. The Net is very noisy in the scientific sense: there is a lot of information out there, but it's swamped by the sheer bulk of irrelevancies. My goal in this paper has been to go out, identify the useful sources of information, and report back on what exists out there and how it fits into the "big picture." This is my "value add," and is the a model for future "analysis providers." In a sense, I'm performing a Siskel and Ebert function for the financial parts of the web.
Who is skipping over the surface of the data sea. One might imagine this paper as a large rock, bouncing off the surface of a massive amount of fluid data. This paper provides an abbreviated treatment of many topics, but I have linked it to massive amounts of information. There is a taste of the liquid at any given touchdown point, and an analysis thereof, but should you ever wish to delve deeper, you need only follow the links down.
And standing on the shoulders of giants. I can see farther because of the massive hardware and software (information) resources provided by members of the global "information organism." One of the strengths of this paper is that it will dynamically update itself, but only so long as information providers update and maintain their portions of the Web to which I have linked. Thus I'd like to thank the untold number of unknowing "collaborators" for contributing and continuing to contribute to this paper.
the next "linear" topic,
or the table of contents?