Alert icon
We're changing our privacy policy. This stuff matters.  Learn more  Dismiss

The Web That Wasn't

Loading...

Sign in or sign up now!
53,494
Loading...
Alert icon
Sign in or sign up now!
Alert icon

Uploaded by on Oct 26, 2007

Google Tech Talks
October, 23 2007

ABSTRACT

For most of us who work on the Internet, the Web is all we have ever really known. It's almost impossible to imagine a world without browsers, URLs and HTTP. But in the years leading up to Tim Berners-Lee's world-changing invention, a few visionary information scientists were exploring alternative systems that often bore little resemblance to the Web as we know it today. In this presentation, author and information architect Alex Wright will explore the heritage of these almost-forgotten systems in search of promising ideas left by the historical wayside.

The presentation will focus on the pioneering work of Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush, and Doug Engelbart, forebears of the 1960s and 1970s like Ted Nelson, Andries van Dam, and the Xerox PARC team, and more recent forays like Brown's Intermedia system. We'll trace the heritage of these systems and the solutions they suggest to present day Web quandaries, in hopes of finding clues to the future in the recent technological past.

Speaker: Alex Wright
Alex Wright is an information architect at the New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. Previously, Alex has led projects for The Long Now Foundation, California Digital Library, Harvard University, IBM, Microsoft, Rollyo and Sun Microsystems, among others. He maintains a personal Web site at http://www.alexwright.org/

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

License:

Standard YouTube License

  • likes, 9 dislikes

Link to this comment:

Share to:

Top Comments

  • Go back to posting those at google videos. youtube interface sucks big time.

  • Classification and controlled vocabularies are not forgotten. Not by library information science, anyway. You see, us librarians, we tend to hold on to things just a little bit longer than your average software developper. Even the really old and uncool stuff doesn't get the boot as long as we can imagine any decent future use for it. You know, 'in case shit'.

see all

All Comments (66)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • @annagram71 also, software "developer".

  • a guy who wrote a book about web history and says "web 2.0" without refering to the bbs era, loses points in my book. and he seems to define the web as only being the network after mosaic, even though the web had been in existence for longer than that, and that the internet is something far beyond your web browser, though hg wells was right, STORM the first self defending autonomous botnet, first lifeform of the web era.

  • "we" librarians.

  • Вернитесь к видео (нажав кнопку "Назад" в браузере либо нажав на название видео в верхней части страницы) и нажмите "Добавить комментарий".

  • zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz­zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

View all Comments »
Loading...

0 / 00Unsaved Playlist Return to active list
    1. Your queue is empty. Add videos to your queue using this button:
      or sign in to load a different list.
    Loading...Loading...Saving...
    • Clear all videos from this list
    • Learn more