WWW@10

There is a huge web conference going on at my school right now. Some of the greatest pioneers of the web are here talking. The few that I remember include: the creator of the mouse, the creator of hyperlinks, the first webmaster in the United States, and the head of W3C. I am going to as many of these as I can and writing up summaries of each of them. I may come back and rewrite a few adding what I think, but right now they aren't much more than summaries.

New Rules for WWW

Communcations and Technology: Are Old Rules OvR8td

This was a short interesting talk about language and communication on the internet and how it differs from traditional communication. There are several formats of communication on the internet; email, web pages, blogs, IM, IRC. While there is no written rule, there are rules and formalities which will be enforced by those using them.

These new ways of communicating are being used in the workplace and meeting mixed success. It can improve efficiency but it can also decrease it. The decrease in efficiency is not generally the fault of the type of communication, but because it is so easy that people have stopped taking the time to think about what they are trying to communicate and their words fail to do so, not the technology.

The speakers were Wilkinson, Wiedmaier

Living in a Transparent Future: Search in a Wired World

<>This talk did not catch my interest as much as the other two did. The topic was about using search engines to allow everything to interact. Personal search engines would use semantic search (understanding the relationships between certain words to ascertain whether two web pages are about the same topic). Search engines for professional use would be more oriented towards accessing articles and such from many different formats, not only text. These could include picture files, PowerPoint presentations, or many others. A few predictions were made: eventually all objects will be connected to the internet. This can already be seen with cars that have GPS and mapping software in them. A refrigerator has a computer in it. One interesting item that was mentioned was work being done at MIT to have a interactive parking. Each parking spot would know if there was a car in it, and anyone with an interactive car would know where parking spots were free. This would also do away with parking meters.
Speaker: Wollowski

The Evolution of DHTML, a Non-Existant Technology

Knuckles discussed the evolution of the capabilities browsers had when viewing web pages, paralleling Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Focusing on customization and scripting, which he defined as Dynamic HTML, he concluded that DHTML is dead. It is being replaced by new better scripting languages. He also noted the existence of JavaScript, which may become the leading script language in the future

Convo

Cooperation and competition in building the World Wide Web

Abramatic spoke on the evolution of the internet, and how W3C had a part in it. There was a focus on the different types of networks around that time, including Bitnet and ARPAnet.

Bring the Web to America

Kunz, who was the first webmaster in the United States, again spoke of history. He discussed how a completely unrelated field to computer science, such as high energy physics, did in fact play a key role in the coming of the internet to America. There was a bit more detail in his talk than the one before, or the one after. He was also the only native English speaker of the three. The other two are French. Focusing on academia as the main proponent of the web, he emphasized the importance of this. Had the web been created by government there would have been huge negative ramifications. Had it been created by a company it again would have been very different.

Internet, the coming-of-age

This again was simply a history lesson. Pouzin outlined the many networks that came and went over a period of time.

Secrets of Successful Pioneers

This was not a talk, but instead a question and answer session, and so did not have a theme or a main speaker. I did get to finally hear from the inventor of hyperlinks, who seems like a very interesting non-conformist.