Web Strangelove
In 1945, Vannevar Bush described an academic’s dream research tool. Writing in The Atlantic Monthly, he envisioned a future device that would give anyone ready access to the sum of all human knowledge through a machine built into their desktop. A key feature of Bush’s system, which he called a “Memex”, was the ability to link together pieces of information into a web of interrelationships.
Twenty years later, Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext” in describing “non-sequential writing”. Presumably informed by Bush’s original vision, Nelson’s research led to the conceptual design of a system he christened “Xanadu” – a global information network that would allow anyone to share any information with any other individual or group. In the Xanadu system each element, each separate piece of content would be capable of being linked and related to any other piece through a simple hypertext metaphor.
An important new factor introduced in Nelson’s discussion was the importance of a viable commercial model in the development of any such system. Xanadu was envisaged as an e-business environment long before that label was even defined - with provisions built into the architecture for content authors to be paid a micro fee for each reference to, and use of, their contributions. His most recent work in this area has been in developing the concept of Transpublishing – “a proposed system that could clear up many Internet copyright problems”. Seems like Nelson was already figuring out how to answer Napster’s problems before Shawn Fanning was even born.
Both Bush’s and Nelson’s visions have come close to full realization in recent years, perhaps as much through necessity as by conscious design. The interconnection of various military and academic networks during the last quarter of the 20th Century to create the foundations of the Internet has led to unprecedented opportunities for advancement in the field of human knowledge – with a fabulous wealth of intellectual assets now available to an unlimited audience.
Subsequent iterative improvements have layered functionality and depth over the underlying network. Significant innovations, such as the Web this blog forms part of, have dramatically enhanced the usability of the medium and given rise to many, varied new applications far beyond Bush’s dream. Anyone with a computer and Internet connection has the ability to access a large part of whatever the world knows, and leverage this collected intelligence to create their own unique wealth engine.
Of course, the manner in which this has all been built and the tools used to do it don’t exactly light Ted Nelson’s candle. He has some pretty scathing and entertaining things to say about the dangers of HTML and the whole hideous mess we’ve created for ourselves throughout his site, especially here.
But that’s another story.
The Web’s crap, when you think about it. Magnificent, but also crap. A staggering volume of content connected to more content connected to more content – all held together by layer upon layer of arcane technology, sealing wax, baling twine, duct tape and silicone caulking. I’m constantly amazed that it all works as well as it does most of the time (even in the face of the many corporate efforts to “improve” it). Somehow we’ve created something that at times seems to be self defining, self healing, self organizing. Other times, it all seems to be on the point of falling apart forever.
Every now and then I start to worry about this stuff. I worry that the Web doesn’t work well enough. My entire professional life so far has centred around technology and yet it still makes me nervous. The first company I started was a one-man consulting & tech training shop. I so wanted to call it Ludd I.T. but didn't. Wuss.
(STOP PRESS: Just checked: luddIT.com is still available. If I could be bothered to pony up the 70 bucks I'd scamper off and snag it right now. Can't be arsed. I hereby gift the idea and domain name rights to anyone sad enough to be reading this drivel right now, on the sole condition that you grant me a seat on the board of the resulting dot-com when you steal my idea and go haring off in pursuit of your next paper billion. luddite.com,of course, already exists, although I've never been able to figure out if these guys are for real).
What was I saying...? Oh, yes.
As much as I worry about the inherent, defining brokenness of the Web, I worry about what might happen if it ever reaches the point of working too well. And what could come after that. For years I’ve been bringing up E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” in the context of discussions about Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson or our society’s increasing dependence on, and faith in, technology.
Seems hardly anyone has ever heard of this story. I first read it as a set text at grammar school in England. Now, of course, I have a copy on my Palm, which seems almost self-referential, if you see what I mean. Forster paints a wonderfully bleak picture of a post-apocalyptic dystopia in which humanity has become so utterly dependent on technology as to be rendered completely helpless when, as the title suggests, the “Machine” that runs the world and all forms of life support, simply stops working.
Of course, the Machine has grown over time to become so big and complex that no one person or group is able to understand enough about the workings of the thing to start fixing it. “As technology advances, our relative understanding decreases, and our helplessness and confusion increases,” as that Weinberger bloke once said.
Neat thing about the Web, of course, is that Forster’s story is now available, out of copyright, online.
The Web has clearly already been a disruptive technology - shattering the most fundamental preconceptions of how the world works as emphatically as the Cartwright loom or moveable type printing press did in previous eras. Not everyone fully believes this to be true yet. Not everyone has fully understood the importance of the Web. When you’re right in the middle of a genuine paradigm shift and living it every day, things are bound to look messy. Revolutions always look messy on the inside.
Yet this new Industrial Revolution or “Information Revolution” is still only in its earliest phases. The first wave of discontinuous innovations has passed – overturning established business thinking and traditional market models within a span of less than ten years.
Now we find the business world drawing breath. Without the Web there would be no New Economy. Well, duh. But many of the lofty ambitions and disruptive ideas of the early vendors in the New Economy seem to have hit the wall with a noisy splat.
What have we missed in the hurry to get here? What is it going to take to fully articulate this new mode of business, and make it work? What are the barriers to adoption that caused so many dot-coms to fail consumer acceptance tests on the path to building a lasting franchise? I have some other set aside scribblings on this whole Idea Economy/Paul Romer thing somewhere. Have to dig ‘em out and slap ‘em up here at some point.
==========
I’ve wandered far and wide in this, I know. In erratic orbit around some central set of questions and issues already addressed elsewhere, better, by others. If I was publishing this through anything other than a blog, I’d want to rework, cut, rewrite and better organize this entire ramble. I find the blog format terribly liberating in this respect – it positively encourages stream of consciousness writing. Not necessarily a good thing, but bugger it.
Guess I’m like a lot of people who spend large parts of their life working in the New Economy, but are still trying to figure out what the Web is really for. Assuming it has a purpose at all. And is it even wise or necessary to worry about purpose here? Does it matter? This thing can be, and is, anything we want it to be. I learned to stop worrying and love the Web a long time ago.
In 1945, Vannevar Bush described an academic’s dream research tool. Writing in The Atlantic Monthly, he envisioned a future device that would give anyone ready access to the sum of all human knowledge through a machine built into their desktop. A key feature of Bush’s system, which he called a “Memex”, was the ability to link together pieces of information into a web of interrelationships.
Twenty years later, Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext” in describing “non-sequential writing”. Presumably informed by Bush’s original vision, Nelson’s research led to the conceptual design of a system he christened “Xanadu” – a global information network that would allow anyone to share any information with any other individual or group. In the Xanadu system each element, each separate piece of content would be capable of being linked and related to any other piece through a simple hypertext metaphor.
An important new factor introduced in Nelson’s discussion was the importance of a viable commercial model in the development of any such system. Xanadu was envisaged as an e-business environment long before that label was even defined - with provisions built into the architecture for content authors to be paid a micro fee for each reference to, and use of, their contributions. His most recent work in this area has been in developing the concept of Transpublishing – “a proposed system that could clear up many Internet copyright problems”. Seems like Nelson was already figuring out how to answer Napster’s problems before Shawn Fanning was even born.
Both Bush’s and Nelson’s visions have come close to full realization in recent years, perhaps as much through necessity as by conscious design. The interconnection of various military and academic networks during the last quarter of the 20th Century to create the foundations of the Internet has led to unprecedented opportunities for advancement in the field of human knowledge – with a fabulous wealth of intellectual assets now available to an unlimited audience.
Subsequent iterative improvements have layered functionality and depth over the underlying network. Significant innovations, such as the Web this blog forms part of, have dramatically enhanced the usability of the medium and given rise to many, varied new applications far beyond Bush’s dream. Anyone with a computer and Internet connection has the ability to access a large part of whatever the world knows, and leverage this collected intelligence to create their own unique wealth engine.
Of course, the manner in which this has all been built and the tools used to do it don’t exactly light Ted Nelson’s candle. He has some pretty scathing and entertaining things to say about the dangers of HTML and the whole hideous mess we’ve created for ourselves throughout his site, especially here.
But that’s another story.
The Web’s crap, when you think about it. Magnificent, but also crap. A staggering volume of content connected to more content connected to more content – all held together by layer upon layer of arcane technology, sealing wax, baling twine, duct tape and silicone caulking. I’m constantly amazed that it all works as well as it does most of the time (even in the face of the many corporate efforts to “improve” it). Somehow we’ve created something that at times seems to be self defining, self healing, self organizing. Other times, it all seems to be on the point of falling apart forever.
Every now and then I start to worry about this stuff. I worry that the Web doesn’t work well enough. My entire professional life so far has centred around technology and yet it still makes me nervous. The first company I started was a one-man consulting & tech training shop. I so wanted to call it Ludd I.T. but didn't. Wuss.
(STOP PRESS: Just checked: luddIT.com is still available. If I could be bothered to pony up the 70 bucks I'd scamper off and snag it right now. Can't be arsed. I hereby gift the idea and domain name rights to anyone sad enough to be reading this drivel right now, on the sole condition that you grant me a seat on the board of the resulting dot-com when you steal my idea and go haring off in pursuit of your next paper billion. luddite.com,of course, already exists, although I've never been able to figure out if these guys are for real).
What was I saying...? Oh, yes.
As much as I worry about the inherent, defining brokenness of the Web, I worry about what might happen if it ever reaches the point of working too well. And what could come after that. For years I’ve been bringing up E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” in the context of discussions about Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson or our society’s increasing dependence on, and faith in, technology.
Seems hardly anyone has ever heard of this story. I first read it as a set text at grammar school in England. Now, of course, I have a copy on my Palm, which seems almost self-referential, if you see what I mean. Forster paints a wonderfully bleak picture of a post-apocalyptic dystopia in which humanity has become so utterly dependent on technology as to be rendered completely helpless when, as the title suggests, the “Machine” that runs the world and all forms of life support, simply stops working.
Of course, the Machine has grown over time to become so big and complex that no one person or group is able to understand enough about the workings of the thing to start fixing it. “As technology advances, our relative understanding decreases, and our helplessness and confusion increases,” as that Weinberger bloke once said.
Neat thing about the Web, of course, is that Forster’s story is now available, out of copyright, online.
The Web has clearly already been a disruptive technology - shattering the most fundamental preconceptions of how the world works as emphatically as the Cartwright loom or moveable type printing press did in previous eras. Not everyone fully believes this to be true yet. Not everyone has fully understood the importance of the Web. When you’re right in the middle of a genuine paradigm shift and living it every day, things are bound to look messy. Revolutions always look messy on the inside.
Yet this new Industrial Revolution or “Information Revolution” is still only in its earliest phases. The first wave of discontinuous innovations has passed – overturning established business thinking and traditional market models within a span of less than ten years.
Now we find the business world drawing breath. Without the Web there would be no New Economy. Well, duh. But many of the lofty ambitions and disruptive ideas of the early vendors in the New Economy seem to have hit the wall with a noisy splat.
What have we missed in the hurry to get here? What is it going to take to fully articulate this new mode of business, and make it work? What are the barriers to adoption that caused so many dot-coms to fail consumer acceptance tests on the path to building a lasting franchise? I have some other set aside scribblings on this whole Idea Economy/Paul Romer thing somewhere. Have to dig ‘em out and slap ‘em up here at some point.
==========
I’ve wandered far and wide in this, I know. In erratic orbit around some central set of questions and issues already addressed elsewhere, better, by others. If I was publishing this through anything other than a blog, I’d want to rework, cut, rewrite and better organize this entire ramble. I find the blog format terribly liberating in this respect – it positively encourages stream of consciousness writing. Not necessarily a good thing, but bugger it.
Guess I’m like a lot of people who spend large parts of their life working in the New Economy, but are still trying to figure out what the Web is really for. Assuming it has a purpose at all. And is it even wise or necessary to worry about purpose here? Does it matter? This thing can be, and is, anything we want it to be. I learned to stop worrying and love the Web a long time ago.
