Weaving the web.

[kgun]

1. Introduction and background.

I have always believed that Tim Berners-Lee created the web. It is much more complicated to agree on who invented the internet. Some have claimed that Al Gore did. I once participated on a seminar with Kristen Nygaard that said that very early he and his staff at the university of Oslo used a concept, the dynabook.

"The Dynabook was a conceptual system proposed by Xerox PARC, 1968. The ideas behind it led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which embodied all the elements of a graphical user interface, or GUI, as early as 1972. The software component of this research was Smalltalk, which went on to have a life of its own independent of the Dynabook concept.
The Dynabook concept described what is now known as a laptop computer or, (in some of its other incarnations) a tablet PC or slate computer with nearly eternal battery life and software aimed mostly at giving children unlimited expression opportunities with all digital media imaginable."

May be, the dynabook was the forerunner of the laptob computer, but as far as I remember, it was more in his view, more like a digital library.

2. Links.

As we know the world wide web is all about links. Some people like Ted Nelson, says that we should ignore the misunderstandings that have produced the present world.

3. A better web?

Newer technologies like XLink with simple and extended links, semanitc attributes and roles connected to links has the potential to create a richer web and hypermedia and digital documents. One great advantage with a digital web document to a traditional paper document is that, true transclusion is now possible. That means that if you cite another source in your document, that cite is transcluded to your document. From the context, it is clear that this cite is from the original or a related source. The section may be separated from the rest of the content in the document, by colour or text style. The next generation community software like phpBB and vBulletin should have this as a feature in the inbuilt editor. That means that it should be possible to colour a section from an external source and transclude that section in a forum post. Preferrably it is done using the XML family of technologies like XLink and XPointer and not JavaScript.

4. Related links.

Creating a Science of the Web | Web Science Research Initiative

What is the Hosts file?

XFN: Introduction and Examples

5. Litterature.

Berners-Lee: Weaving the Web

OUP: UK General Catalogue

[khurramali]

IMHO: The World Wide Web evolved as opposed to created by one person or one entity.

Although, we cannot rule out contributions made by people like Tim Berners-Lee whose efforts helped in shaping the internet to what it is today.

[kgun]

Interesting view.

[wige]

I think there were a few groups that contributed to the Internet as we know it today...

Tim Berners-Lee: Invented the Internet, by drafting most of the protocols we use on the web.

Al Gore: Created the Internet, by drafting the legislation that established the backbone of the current Internet with the first national fiber-optic data network, the research institute that developed the first commercial web browser, etc.

The US Military and DARPA: Conceptualized and Architected the Internet, by building the prototype of the modern Internet (ARPANET) in conjunction with several research and education groups, as well as many of the WAN topography, addressing and linking principles still in use today.

And all of us, of course, for going out and putting something there to be seen/visited/used...

[kgun]

What about the Document Object Model (DOM) and object oriented programming. Can you think of a web document without the document object model? Related link:

The Object-Oriented Hypermedia Design Model (OOHDM)

But IMO, Tim Berners-Lee created the website of the world's first-ever web server. Or is that wrong too?

In my view many contributed directly or indirectly. You must dig deeper into the above links to understand my point.