From Webspace to Cyberspace Kevin Hughes Enterprise Integration Technologies July 1995 From Webspace to Cyberspace Version 1.0: December 1994 Version 1.1: July 1995 Copyright 1995 by Kevin Hughes The opinions stated in this document are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Enterprise Integration Technologies. This document as a whole may be redistributed freely in any format for non-commercial purposes only. Comments, questions, corrections, and suggestions relating to this document are welcomed and can be sent to [email protected]. Trademarked names are used throughout this document; the trademark sym- bols have been omitted for editorial convenience with no intention of trade- mark infringement. Where such omissions exist the trademarked name has been printed with initial capitals. About the Author Kevin Hughes designs hypermedia products for EIT and is their webmaster. He has written Entering the World-Wide Web: A Guide to Cyberspace, an introduction to the World-Wide Web that has been used as training material in numerous companies and universities, and is a member of the World-Wide Web Hall of Fame. Enterprise Integration Technologies 800 El Camino Real Menlo Park, CA • 94025 Lobby: (415) 617-8000 Fax: (415) 617-8019 World-Wide Web: http://www.eit.com/ Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. Vannevar Bush As We May Think Atlantic Monthly, July 1945 The trouble with the future is that it usually arrives when you least expect it. Arnold H. Glasow Foreword and Preface 5 of 254 Foreword and May 1993 was a quiet month, and it was business as usual on the Preface Internet. There was email, news, and plenty of other services available online with discussion and software; the community was steeped in things like telnet, FTP, UNIX, and X; in many respects nothing had changed much for years. If my workstation had suddenly time warped to 1988, I would have noticed few dif- ferences. If I wanted to read a book on the Internet, I would have made a trip to the local university bookstore and purchased a good UNIX book. If I wanted to tell my friends about the electronic hobby I had immersed myself in, I would have first asked, “Have you heard of the word ‘Internet’ before?” There was little hope that I could explain things in any coherent manner if they had not first heard about, or read about, the Word. If they knew, by some rare chance, they would inevitably reply, “But there’s nothing there.” They were right. Everything was there for me, for my classmates that pulled allnighters playing xtrek, for the slackers in the computer lab, for the occasional university stu- dent that wanted to learn about email. But there was little for everyone else, and I couldn’t email just anyone else. 1993 was the year of the great Internet explosion, when the charts following net usage on the North American backbones went crazy. The numbers are still increasing. If I want to read a book on the Internet, all I have to do is find the Internet section of the bookstore. Telling my friends about what I do would serve no purpose since they already know; my relatives say, “The Internet sounds nice, but what would I do with all that information?” The World-Wide Web is not a phenomenon. It’s one step in a log- ical evolution. The World-Wide Web is not just a cause. It’s a symptom. It’s a reflection of how thoroughly my generation has been saturated with media, and a reflection of how badly previous generations are adjusting to that fact. The state of the Internet is an indicator of how we choose to act and react and of the ways in which we inform, learn, and dominate over others. Cyberspace, a greatly misunderstood medium, is now upon us. There is a high probability that you have heard of this Word as well. Whatever meanings it has taken on in the past, there is one definition that influences and changes everything: cyberspace is an interconnected computer-mediated environment in which all prior media are represented. This document explores what this means for all of us: Where did it come from? Why? How can we work in this, and what can we do? How can we create and com- municate in this ultimate medium? This is a beginner’s guide, a primer for the Age of the Internet. 6 of 254 From Webspace to Cyberspace This document was first written in December 1994 as an internal white paper. It has since been greatly expanded and updated. The main sections are: ● The State of the Web - A brief history and opening. ● Collaborative Systems - An overview and analysis of current and future collaborative online media. ● Cyberspace - What it means and what can be done with it. ● Creating Cyberspace - Issues related to the development of systems that can be used to create and explore virtual environments within cyberspace. ● Living In Cyberspace - Issues related to building future human-computer environments for information visualization and exploration. ● Tomorrow’s Internet - What the online future will look like. Topics related to business, media, online freedom, and what cyberspace needs. Towards the end is a reference list of works, a timeline, and an index. I would like to apologize for putting the initial version of this work into a paper-based format; I do so for the convenience of those that have traditional printers. Hopefully one day I will not have to think about measurements or double-sided layout when writing. I thank Marty Tenenbaum and William Wong at EIT for supplying resources and supporting my vision. Thanks go also to Mark Pesce, Brian Behlendorf, Tony Parisi, and many others for spreading the cyberspace meme which is now lodging itself firmly in the 21st century. This work is dedicated to all of my (four) parents and my teach- ers, doctors, and friends, not necessarily in that order or role. Although not everyone cared about the message, the important thing is that they listened. Kevin Hughes Menlo Park, California July 1995 Table of Contents 7 of 254 Table of Contents Foreword and Preface . .5 Table of Contents . .7 1.0 The State of the Web . .9 1.1 New Ways of Communication . 13 1.2 Collaborative Systems . 13 2.0 Cyberspace . .35 2.1 A New Definition. 36 2.2 Encapsulation . 37 2.3 Notes on Successful Terminology . 41 2.4 Myths . 43 2.5 Why Virtual Environments? . 46 2.6 Applications . 47 3.0 Creating Cyberspace. .65 3.1 VRML and HTML . 65 3.2 New Definitions . 65 3.3 Tools. 66 3.4 MOO/WOO Thoughts. 68 3.5 Coordinate Systems. 69 3.6 Editing . 70 3.7 Objects. 71 3.8 Constructs . 74 3.9 Links. 80 3.10 Sensing Proximity and Location. 80 3.11 Moving and Viewing. 81 3.12 World Issues . 92 3.13 Other Issues. 94 3.14 A Prototype VRML/HTML System . 94 3.15 Cyberspace Guidelines . 99 4.0 Living In Cyberspace. .101 4.1 Next Generation Environments . 101 4.2 Vision . .114 4.3 Input/Output Devices . 120 4.4 Possibilities . 127 4.5 Designing Worlds. 144 4.6 Common Problems . 158 4.7 The Open Interface . 160 5.0 Tomorrow’s Internet. .161 5.1 The Future of the Web . 161 5.2 New Business . 165 8 of 254 From Webspace to Cyberspace 5.3 The Medium is Still the Message . 173 5.4 New Society . 178 5.5 What Does Cyberspace Need? . 193 A History of Cyberspace . .197 References . .239 Timeline References . 243 Other Media. 247 Index . .249 1 The State of the Web 9 of 254 Everything good in the computer field has come about because someone said, “I want this, and I will build it for myself.” Ted Nelson 1 Computer Lib The State It has been over two years since the explosive growth of the of the Web World-Wide Web began. NCSA’s What’s New page, one of the most popular Web pages on the Internet, has evolved from what was once a meager listing of a few dozen sites to a corporate- sponsored page that is now updated three times weekly. From The Economist to Wired, from the San Francisco Chronicle to Time, from one person garage startups to billion-dollar multina- tional companies, news of the Web has spread faster than a jour- nalist can type “information superhighway”. Some say that we are in the midst of a second revolution - while the first brought the word computer into daily conversation, the second has sparked the commercialization of the Internet, it has made online space a trendy place to hang out, it has done noth- ing less than tell people that one no longer has to be an under- graduate computer science student to enjoy surfing the net on weekends. It is bringing the world together online and its impact will be felt as long as anyone has something to say to anyone else. From 100 sites to well over 20,000 sites in the last 24 months - the Web, the fastest growing service on the Internet today, has sparked a renaissance among the net life. This is, of course, despite the fact that the World-Wide Web project was created within the European physics community as a text-only system for allowing researchers to view scattered pieces of information in one place. And this is despite the fact that for four years the Web was mostly used by scientific institutions and was mostly ignored by everyone else.