In the 1950s and early 1960s, prior to the widespread inter-networking that led to the Internet, most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the network. Some networks had gateways or bridges between them, but these bridges were often limited or built specifically for a single use. One prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe method, simply allowing its terminals to be connected via long leased lines. This method was used in the 1950s by Project RAND to support researchers such as Herbert Simon, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when collaborating across the continent with researchers in Sullivan, Illinois, on automated theorem proving and artificial intelligence.
I am not going to rant about the history of internet here. This is covered in a very comprehensive and lucid way in this excellent article at Wikipedia. Another great article, starting a little earlier than the 1950s… Roads and Crossroads of Internet History.
Walt Howe’s discourse about the history of internet is also very interesting to read.
Another interesting aspect is Al Gore’s contribution to the growth of internet.
The commercialization of the Internet brought extraordinary, almost to the point of being irrational, wealth to a few individuals. The euphoria created by sudden connectivity, unleashing the power of individual creativity and bringing it onto a world stage with very little cost was also paralleled in an irrational exuberance in the stock markets. This is also commonly known as the Dot Com Bubble.
It all started during the mid 1990’s. The Stock Market soared on technology and Internet stocks, IPOs were all the rage, and the sky was the limit for stock prices. The masses believed there was a new world upon us, and the internet was to become the future of business. Then reality set in when the hype didn’t live up to its promises and the stock market crashed. If you take all of this for only its face value, all you see is what happens when a stock market gets overvalued and crashes, but if you look deeper you can find plenty of timeless lessons that every investor should learn.
Ian Peter’s History of the Internet - the Dotcom bubble nicely summarizes the Internet and Dot Com Bubble.
Web 2.0 is a buzzword that exploded in popularity sometime in 2005. In 2004, software guru Tim O'Reilly founded the Web 2.0 Conference, held annually in San Francisco. It has since expanded from a conference into a way of thinking, a new approach to doing business on the Internet. There is no standard definition for web 2.0, as it is a cluster of ideas rather than anything clear-cut. However, O'Reilly's comments on the topic are seen as having special authority, and rank among the top Google search results for the term.
According to Tim O’Reilly – “Web 2.0 is the term used, in the technology field, to refer to some exciting developments that promise to bring us to a new and improved internet experience. For developers this means learning new technologies and frameworks to provide better, faster and more sophisticated features”.
The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O'Reilly VP, noted that far from having "crashed", the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What's more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as "Web 2.0" might make sense? We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.
Paul Graham describes Web 2.0 as an idea that was meaningless when started, but has acquired a meaning during the intervening period. He then goes on to describe the various components that contribute to the new revolution.
According to Wikipedia - Web 2.0 is a term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and its hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users utilize the Web.
The first premise of web 2.0 is leveraging the power of the user. For example, fluid user tagging of content would be used instead of a centralized taxonomy. Web 2.0 entrepreneurs often consider the Long Tail, which is basically an observation that the vast majority of the attention market is based on niche content. Web 2.0 is radically decentralized, as in the case of BitTorrent, a collaborative downloading co-op that consumes a serious portion of all Internet traffic.
Blogs are considered web 2.0. Instead of centralized "personal home pages", blogs let people easily post as much or as little as they want as rarely or as frequently as they want. Feed aggregators ensure that people only need to visit a single site to see all the feeds they subscribe to. Comments are enabled everywhere, allowing people to participate rather than passively consume content.
Web 2.0 technology encourages lightweight business models enabled by syndication of content and of service and by ease of picking-up by early adopters.
O'Reilly provided examples of companies or products that embody these principles in his description of his four levels in the hierarchy of Web 2.0 sites:
- Level-3 applications, the most "Web 2.0"-oriented, exist only on the Internet, deriving their effectiveness from the inter-human connections and from the network effects that Web 2.0 makes possible and growing in effectiveness in proportion as people make more use of them. O'Reilly gave eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball, and AdSense as examples.
- Level-2 applications can operate offline but gain advantages from going online. O'Reilly cited Flickr, which benefits from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag database.
- Level-1 applications operate offline but gain features online. O'Reilly pointed to Writely (now Google Docs & Spreadsheets) and iTunes (because of its music-store portion).
- Level-0 applications work as well offline as online. O'Reilly gave the examples of MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps (mapping-applications using contributions from users to advantage could rank as "level 2").
Non-web applications like email, instant-messaging clients, and the telephone fall outside the above hierarchy
Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide "Network as platform" computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser. Users can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. These sites may have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. This stands in contrast to very old traditional websites, the sort which limited visitors to viewing and whose content only the site's owner could modify. Web 2.0 sites often feature a rich, user-friendly interface based on Ajax, OpenLaszlo, Flex or similar rich media.
Second life and similar platforms provide an immersive environment where users can interact with each other in a father richer way than was possible through the web 1.0 tools such as chats, emails, etc.
In my next post, I’ll be talking more on how this new revolution is touching lives and what may be in store for humanity with this medium… almost bordering on the science fiction!
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