The World Wide Web is an exciting area for discovery and innovation. It is built around the concept of hypertext. This involves linking one document to another document so that the second can explain a term or concept in the first. For instance, let's say you're reading a document on salmon, and you reach a section where the word "roe" is marked in some way to make it stand out from the rest of the text (usually underlined and/or in color). If you move your cursor to the word "roe" and click once (not twice as in operating systems!), you'll view a document which explains what roe are and may add some characteristic of salmon roe. Exciting, eh? It's a way of building in definitions and additional explanatory material without disrupting the flow of the text for those who may not need that material.
Many electronic encyclopedias have used this same concept, some with quite interesting audiovisual items in place of text explanations. (Actually, the concept of hypertext pre-dates the WWW.) This is the other exciting part of World Wide Web: the graphics and sound capabilities. You can link documents to images and pictures and sound clips for a more exciting package. Just click on the word "lion," for instance, and you'll hear it roar. Many folks who use World Wide Web home pages as business cards will have a photograph of themselves or the family included on the page. (see my home page for example). A home page is the first page or screen at a World Wide Web site.
Beyond the hypertext and audiovisuals, the World Wide Web is really a web of information and connections. Each item you choose in a Web site will either take you to another spot in the site you were in or will lead you to another part of the Web. You can always get back to where you were by retracing you steps.
Just to mention this so that you won't be confused later, the Web has a number of different acronyms and abbreviations. It can be referred to in any of the following ways:World Wide Web (three syllables)WWW (nine syllables)
W3 (four syllables)
the Web (two syllables)
In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) invented the World Wide Web (that you are currently using. You may recall a reference to this in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.) The "Web" was originally conceived and developed for the large high-energy physics collaborations which have a demand for instantaneous information sharing between physicists working in different universities and institutes all over the world. Tim together with Robert Cailliau wrote the first WWW client (a browser-editor running under NeXTStep, a cousin of the Macintosh) and the first WWW server along with most of the communications software, defining URLs, HTTP and HTML.
The World-Wide Web was first developed as a tool for collaboration in the high energy physics community. From there it spread rapidly to other fields, and grew to its present impressive size. As an easy way to access information, it has been a great success. But there is another side to the Web, its potential as a tool for collaboration between people. Here is some background to the early development of the World-Wide Web, a brief overview of its present state and an introduction to the concepts on which it is based.
In spite of all this enthusiasm for electronic communication, there were many obstacles in the 1980s to the effective exchange of information. There was a great variety of computer and network systems, with hardly any common features. Users needed to understand many inconsistent and complicated systems. Different types of information had to be accessed in different ways, involving a big investment of effort by users. The result was frustration and inefficiency.
This was fertile soil for the invention of the World-Wide Web by Berners-Lee. Using the WWW, scientists could at last access information from any source in a consistent and simple way. The launching of this revolutionary idea was made possible by the widespread adoption of the Internet around that time. This provided a de facto standard for communication between computers, on which WWW could be built. It also brought into being a "virtual community" of enthusiastic computer and communications experts, whose attitude fostered progress via the exchange of information over the Internet.
The first proposal for such a system was made at CERN by Berners-Lee was in 1989, and was further refined by him and Cailliau in 1990. By the end of that year, prototype software for a basic system was already being demonstrated. To encourage the adoption of the system, it was essential to offer access to existing information without having to convert it to an unfamiliar format. This was done by providing an interface to the CERN Computer Centre's documentation and help service, and also to the then-dominant Usenet newsgroups. All this information immediately became accessible via a simple WWW browser, which could be run on any system.
The early system included this browser, along with an information server and a library implementing the essential functions for developers to build their own software. This was released in 1991 to the high energy physics community via the CERN program library (via FTP), so that a whole range of universities and research laboratories could start to use it. A little later it was made generally available via the Internet, especially to the community of people working on hypertext systems. By the beginning of 1993 there were around 50 known information servers.
At this stage, there were essentially only two kinds of browsers. One was the original development version, very sophisticated but only available on NeXT computers. The other was the "line-mode" browser, which was easy to install and run on any computer platform but limited in power and user-friendliness. It was clear that the small team at CERN could not do all the work needed to develop the system further, so Berners-Lee launched a plea via the Internet for other developers to join in.
Early in 1993, the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois
released a first version of their Mosaic graphical web browser. This
software ran in the X Window System environment (an interface for UNIX
computers), popular in the research community. It could thus offer
friendly window-based interaction on a platform in widespread use.
Shortly afterwards NCSA also released versions for the Windows and
Macintosh environments. By late 1993 there were over 500 known servers,
and WWW accounted for 1% of Internet traffic, which seemed a lot in
those days, and the rest is history!
Tim Berners-Lee now works at the Laboratory of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, where Berners-Lee has taken up a research appointment. By the way, he makes no royalties for his invention of the WWW!
The naming convention used to accomplish this trick is called a URL--Uniform Resource Locater. URLs are the standard naming format for the Internet. This is one of the several technologies developed by Berners-Lee at CERN. They allow web browsers to take you to many different kinds of Internet resources. You can tell which kind of resource you're about to visit by looking at its URL (pronounced "Earl"). Here is a table of some common URL prefixes:
|
URL Prefix |
Type of Resource to Which It Points |
|
http:// |
World Wide Web page |
|
ftp:// |
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site |
|
news:// |
Newsgroup |
|
telnet:// |
Telnet (terminal) session |
Now that we've discussed the history of the WWW, it's time to talk about a few rules of the road. Understanding netiquette, or Internet etiquette, will keep you from making an electronic faux pas and will enable you to tell when others do. Netiquette is as close as the Internet comes to having rules. Like every society in history, the Net has to have a few mutually agreed upon guidelines to efficiently manage resources and maintain group harmony. Chaos reigns in some corners of the Net, but it's in your best interest to be a solid, upstanding netizen.
Below I have listed one set of netiquette rules that illustrate the major issues and common errors made in Internet discourse. This section is taken from a classic online document prepared by Arlene Rinaldi for basic netiquette instruction. In her essay, Rinaldi discusses many forms of internet communication, including email, forum postings, web pages, etc. Her suggestions continue to provide the common sense "rules of the road" for communicating efficiently and professionally on the Internet and thus should be something with which every professional should be familiar:
Electronic Communications
(Email, ListServ mailing lists, and other discussion groups)
Your signature footer should include your name, position, affiliation and Internet addresses and should not exceed more than 10 lines. Optional information could include your address, phone number and URL for a WWW homepage.
Examples: IMHO= in my humble/honest opinion
FYI = for your information
BTW = by the way
Flame = antagonistic criticism
:-) = happy face for humor
However, messages that are filled with acronyms can be confusing and annoying to the reader, i.e. FYI IMHO I FLAME newbies who don't RTFM.
Rinaldi's list gives you the gist of what you should and should not do with email in general. She also has sections in her document that cover other Internet applications we'll discuss later. The full article is available here.
What follows is an expansion on certain of her rules that I would like to stress.
As Rinaldi mentions, capitalization is viewed as shouting except in the case of acronyms or product names. More often than not, a person typing their entire message in caps is not shouting, but is merely less than knowledgeable about the rules. These folks are newbies or new users and should be treated gently. Don't forget--everyone has been a newbie at some point. Subtle reminders should do the job here.
There are cases in the Internet where you may need to use caps (or refrain from them) to use an application that resides on a Unix computer. Unix machines are extremely case-sensitive, and if you attempt to type a command in lower case that is intended to be in upper case you will be stymied. So, if you read about a site you'd like to look at and all the commands are given in upper case, be sure to enter them this way. Otherwise, just type along in mostly lower case and enjoy the laid-back land of the Internet! 8-)
Of course, I was being sarcastic in that last line, as I have been from time to time in the lessons. However, it's very difficult to tell what the true intent of a line of text is in email. In this virtual world, there are no facial movements or changes in tone that can make a derogatory comment into a friendly joke. One academic study as shown that people correctly interpret the intended tone of an email only about 50 percent of the time (Kruger, Gordan, and Kuban, 2006). Because of this, we need to make some changes in our standard typing to convey emotions. One way is to emphasize words or phrases using *asterisks* or _underline symbols_. Another is the use of emoticons (for emotion icons)--symbols that stand for emotive content.
The little 8-) character following my last sentence about capitalization is just one example of an emoticon, which are also called smileys or emoji. If you turn your head to the left, it looks a little like a guy with glasses on smiling. Feel free to create your own, but you can choose from the selection below.
:-) basic smiley face;-) sarcasm
:-( user is unhappy
8-) user wears glasses
B-) user wears horn-rimmed glasses
(-: user is left handed
:*) user is drunk
:-@ user is screaming
d8= your pet beaver is wearing goggles and a hard hat
You can see from this list how quickly the whole communicative aspect deteriorates and the fun begins. 8-) There are lists and dictionaries of smileys available on the Internet (see the assignment for this lesson for a few addresses).
Now we'll return to that capitalization-filled message that isn't a mistake: a flame. Flaming is an often-angry, mean-spirited attack on another person via email. It is a major breach of netiquette to flame someone. It's rather counterproductive and usually the result of either a quick move to judgment or a sadistic temperament. Unfortunately, there is little you can do when you have been flamed. Responding in kind brings only joy to the flamer and provides you with only momentary satisfaction. My advice is to contact a systems administrator at the flamer's institution and register a complaint. Those who flame repeatedly can have their accounts shut down. You may be lucky enough to never be flamed personally (I haven't, unless I'm just too naive 8-) ). I just wanted you to be familiar with the term since it often shows up in heated discussions (i.e., "I'm not trying to flame here, but I think your ideas are full of . . . ").
I cannot emphasize enough here the
importance of a good subject heading for your communications. If a
person or a
listserv sends me a message without a subject heading, I will generally
delete it. The same goes for email attachments and shared documents.
Everything you share on the Internet should be properly labeled. Subject
headings with non-descriptive titles like
"Internet" or "Hi!" can be a bother to deal with.
Now don't get me wrong. I read every piece of email I receive from folks involved in this class. However, when I'm reading messages from other correspondents I need a coherent, meaningful subject heading to help me decide when (or if) I should read the message. Try to be as descriptive as possible in the space provided. Other users out there (who are even pickier than I am) will thank you. Most important, your message will get read.
One issue that crops up periodically is recycling the subject line of your email. We discussed this in the previous lesson, but it bears repeating. The issue is recycling old messages to start a new email conversation. This happens when someone uses an old message left over in their inbox to begin a new correspondence on a new topic, but they leave the old subject line intact. Using an old message to correspond on a new topic may inadvertently cause the message to be mishandled by email applications because the original message's label, as assigned by your email correspondent, will be applied to any replies to that message. So your mis-labeled new message may also be tagged or filed inappropriately (e.g., as spam or filtered to some other folder). The moral of the story? Always start a new email conversation with a fresh new email and always accurately label your subject!
Rinaldi mentions keeping messages and signature files short, and I shout, "here, here!" There's nothing wrong with sending a long message per se. You want to be sure of two things: one, that your recipient(s) will actually want to see the whole message, and two, that you let them know in the subject line that it is a long message (i.e., "Subj: Report on NAFTA - *Long*"). Long messages aren't much of a mechanical or financial difficulty, but can be annoying. So, keep your messages manageable in size and, if possible, warn your recipients.
With signature files, you generally
want to stick with the ten line rule to keep your messages shorter (see
above for reasons). Adding a couple of extra lines is no great sin, but
more than that drives some people bonkers. The whole line limit comes
out of an early prevalence of _long_, _long_ signature files that ate
up space and served only artistic (and egotistic) purpose. We're
talking 20-30+ lines here. You will occasionally see longer ones, but
please try to be courteous.
A Movement to Take Back
Email
Some people believe that email and associated net junk is a problem
worth confronting with political action. Hence a group of concerned
netizens is attempting to provoke a discussion about better and more
efficient ways to use email. The call their movement The Email
Charter. Their goal is to reduce and simplify the rules of when
and how to send email (the "netiquette of email") by proposing 10
rules. The claim "(t)he average time taken to respond to an email is
greater, in aggregate, than the time it took to create it." Take a look
at their proposed rules and vote for the idea if you wish at: <
Conclusion
After letting this lesson soak in, you
should now be able to confidently dine at the Internet table and use
the right fork. With this knowledge in your cranium, I now pronounce
you ready to professionally participate on the Internet wherever you wish.
References and links to more information
Kruger, J., Gordan, C., and Kuban, J. (2006). Intentions in teasing:
When "just kidding" just isn't good enough. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 90, 412-425.
Rinaldi, A. (1998). Electronic Communications (email, LISTSERV groups,
Mailing lists, and Usenet). In The Net: User Guidelines and
Netiquette [Online].
Available via WWW at: http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Netiquette/Rinaldi/
History of the Internet:
This up-to-date interactive website provides a comprehensive
illustrated history of the Internet including some possibilities for
future directions and links to more information.
Internet Lessons version 2.2. Copyright of lessons (C) 2017 by Joseph A. Erickson, All Rights Reserved. Permission Granted for Individual Usage.
If you plan to distribute multiple
copies of this work, please contact the author.