Andy van Dam Brown University April 17, 2008

1. As We May Work Andy van Dam Brown University April 17, 2008

2. Roadmap • My personal and selective history of hypertext • from Vannevar Bush's Memex to • Engelbart's NLS/Augment to • Brown's HES/FRESS/IGD and • Intermedia to Tim Berners-Lee's WWW • The age of the traditional WWW • Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 • Traction TeamPage example • Speculations on the future of Enterprise 2.0 • what facilities are still missing • what is needed to provide them

3. Vannevar Bush – As We May Think • Memex (1945) • "As We May Think", Vannevar Bush in The Atlantic Monthly, 1945 • purpose: to cope with information explosion • personal use • microfilm-based, multi-media • associative trails and professional trail blazers

4. Memex – antecedents Japanese linked poetry Renga and Basho Western religious commentaries

5. Engelbart's NLS (oNLine System) - 1968

6. Engelbart's NLS (oNLine System) - 1968

7. Engelbart's NLS (oNLine System) - 1968 • "Mother of All Demos" (1968) • Bush's vision influenced Engelbart to devote his career to augmentation of human intellect • gestation since 1951 • forerunners of NLS in the mid-60's • Focus – collaborative work groups • Technologies introduced • mini-computer + video terminals with mouse, keyboard • collaboration tools for co-located as well distributed groups • simultaneous voice and screen sharing • chalk-passing protocol for control of cursor

8. My personal history - overview • Brown University projects • 1967: HES (Hypertext Editing System) • partnership with Ted Nelson • 1968: FRESS (File Retrieval and Editing System) • influenced by HES and Engelbart's NLS • 1979: IGD (Interactive Graphical Documents) • 1982: Intermedia • 1990: EBT (Electronic Book Technologies) • 1995: Brown/MIT Bush Symposium in honor of 50th Anniversary of "As We May Think"

9. HES (Hypertext Editing System) - 1967

10. HES (Hypertext Editing System) - 1967 • Inspired by Theodor Nelson's vision of hypertext • Ted as co-designer • Experiment with non-linear information structures • based on fine-grained links • e.g. cross-linked database of electro-plating patents • Read/write tool, no access controls

11. HES (Hypertext Editing System) - 1967 • Simple graphical interface • commands provided via simple function keypad. • insertion points and character strings indicated with light pen • Produced NASA Apollo documentation • Expensive System 360/50 mainframe hardware • with expensive IBM 2250 vector display • thus single user

12. FRESS (File Retrieval&Editing System)-1968 • Influenced by HES and Engelbart's NLS • information structures • preserved HES's arbitrary length text • fine-grained links now bi-directional and tagged • completely difference data structures for scalability • user interface • vector graphics, soft fonts, e.g., Greek • added NLS-style hierarchy, and access and viewing controls ("view specs") down to the character level • supported both a primitive GUI and an NLS-like command language for less capable terminals • intrinsically multi-user via time-sharing system and cheap terminals • Used in production in a variety of courses and projects

13. FRESS (File Retrieval&Editing System)-1968 • Influenced by HES and Engelbart's NLS • information structures • preserved HES's arbitrary length text • plus optional NLS-style hierarchy • fine-grained links now bi-directional and tagged • emphasis on scalability, e.g., new data structure • user interface • both a primitive GUI, and for less capable terminals, an NLS-like command language • access and viewing controls ("view specs") down to character level • vector graphics, soft fonts, e.g., Greek • intrinsically multi-user • time-sharing system and cheap terminals

14. FRESS (File Retrieval&Editing System)-1968 • Used in production in a variety of courses and projects • 1975 - used in a course on "Man, Energy, and Environment" • sponsored by Exxon • 1976 - used in a course on the critical analysis of British and American poetry • sponsored by NEH (National Endowment for Humanities) • rich interlinked corpus of poetry, professional criticism, and student commentary based on hundreds of source documents • First online collaborative scholarly community • every student and instructor read and commented on everyone else's online analyses

15. IGD (Interactive Graphical Documents)-1979

16. IGD (Interactive Graphical Documents)-1979

17. IGD (Interactive Graphical Documents)-1979 • Inverted the text focus of HES and FRESS • emphasized • overviews with directed graphs of page icons • simple animations • automatically generated timelines, tag lists for visual searching • Oriented towards online e-books • primarily for technical documentation, e.g., sonar systems • Context-sensitive links and trails • access control • history

18. Intermedia – IRIS (Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship) - 1982

19. Intermedia – IRIS (Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship) - 1982 • Object-oriented on all levels • arbitrary nesting of objects • Separate link database • allowed multiple link sets ("webs") over same content • Unix-style access control • person-group-world: read-write-execute • Used in multiple courses • cell biology • planetary geology • Context 32 (a literature course) • ...

20. EBT (Electronic Book Technologies) - 1990

21. EBT (Electronic Book Technologies) - 1990 EBT (Electronic Book Technologies) - 1990 • Spinout from Brown University • Combined two previously unconnected technologies • hypertext • SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) • Commercial product • focused on real-world needs of groups, e.g., Boeing • production and use of technical documentation • stylesheet-driven behavior and appearance • DynaText- standalone reader • DynaBase – content management platform • DynaWeb – browser-based reader

22. Summary of pre-WWW contributions • Non-linear & multi-media information structures • branching trails within bi-directional graphs, even hierarchies... • bi-directional, fine-grained, tagged links • conditional links • Read/write interactive user interfaces • Access & viewing controls • Multi-user • Metadata However: all were closed systems!

23. The age of the traditional WWW – 1991 • Strengths from the beginning • from closed systems to open and universal access • scalability • textual links you can edit and email • a platform that makes it possible to build search engines and other apps over WWW. no one had to ask permission. • much lower cost of entry for application development

24. The age of the traditional WWW – 1991 • Strengths from the beginning • open and universal access • scalability • textual links that can be edited and emailed • universal development platform • Web-centric crawlers, search engines, and applications • much more lightweight, agile development • therefore, much lower cost of entry for application development • enables ASPs (Application Services Providers)

25. The age of the traditional WWW – 1991 • Weaknesses • read-only; authoring became a form of programming • HTML lost the huge advantage of SGML's generality, e.g. locked into predefined tag set • XML can be thought of as modern SGML • page-replace to follow a link; no visualization of "you are here" • non-permanent and thus fragile (the dreaded 404!) • Note: some of these limitations are browser limitations rather than intrinsic

26. The age of the traditional WWW – 1991 • Weaknesses • read-only + forms • authoring became a form of programming • HTML lost the huge advantage of SGML's generality • locked into predefined tag set • XML can be thought of as modern SGML • links as unconditional & uni-directional 'goto' pointers • loss of context - no visualization of "you are here" • non-permanent and thus fragile (the dreaded 404!) • Note: some of these limitations are browser limitations rather than intrinsic WWW limitations

27. Web 2.0 – "Back to the Future"

28. Web 2.0 - forces driving change • Technical • WWW platform and applications pervade all areas of life • lightweight interactive tools lower development barriers vs. traditional transactional ERP suites • Social • social network is THE incumbent technology for young adults • "NextGen" lives on web and does instant communications • open source movement • collaborative and emergent (bottom-up) intelligence as change drivers • Business • employees expect their corporate environment to work like the web • new communication tools lead to breakdown of traditional hierarchy • virtual organizations emerge within old structures • niche markets become viable due web-based marketing – "long tail" • design cycles accelerate; product lives measured in months • crowdsourcing ("open innovation") experiments, e.g., Proctor and Gamble

29. Web 2.0 –> Enterprise 2.0

30. Web 2.0 - components • User experience • blogs, wikis, social networking, e.g., MySpace, FaceBook, Mixi, • tagging ("social bookmarking"), collaborative filtering, • 3D virtual worlds, e.g., Second Life, multi-user online role-playing games, e.g., Lord of the Rings Online • Tools for users • search engines • aggregators, e.g., RSS news readers • mashup tools, e.g., Google Mashup Editor, MSFT Popfly, Yahoo Pipes • web authoring, e.g., Adobe Creative Suite™, Microsoft Expression™ • Google applications, e.g., Maps, gmail, ... and Google Apps • Tools for developers • Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) for expression and UI • Adobe Flex™ & Microsoft Silverlight™ web application frameworks • SOA (Service Oriented Architectures) for Web services and location-based mobile social networks, e.g., GyPSii

31. World Wide Telescope Features Simple rich media authoring across multiple image data sets 3D Earth, planets and panorama data sets Multiple wavelength sky image sets Seamless zooming and panning Links to image and data sources Robotic telescope control Communities and KML support Gigapixel image panoramas

32. Web 2.0 Enterprise 2.0 • Web 2.0 provides: "capabilities" • interaction – moving from passive read-only back to active medium • collaboration support • but also vulnerabilities: much use of the web is still "too trusting", e.g., wiki sabotage and cyberterrorism • Enterprise 2.0 needs: "guarantees" • stable content and links – robustness • ability to work within boundaries – security • easier peer-to-peer awareness and collaboration - lateralization • Example: FRESS viewing and editing controls • an early (1972) example of boundaries and spaces, e.g. proposal = main body + summary budget + breakout pages with (elided) salaries

33. Traction TeamPage example

34. Traction TeamPage example • Robust, secure, and linked 'spaces' • interoperates with WWW • version control of internal structure • permanent content and links • wiki and weblog style editable hypertext in spaces • Spaces define boundaries for customer, partner, and internal group work • spaces carry role-based and individual permission • search results, tag clouds, drill-down use permissions • provides global views over many active spaces

35. Future - what facilities are needed? (1/2) • Relationships among groups in business are important but difficult to visualize • when entering a space (office, conference room, or auditorium) • you know who the audience is, and • you know how to interact, using many social and visual cues • should be just as clear and simple in social software systems • Enterprise 2.0 software designers • must learn to think more like architects, who design spaces for social purposes • but the Internet is much bigger (and more complex, even more potentially dangerous) than any physical building

36. Future - what facilities are needed? (2/2) • Data security and permanence • corporate data critical to the survival of the enterprise • heterogeneous combination of transactional and semi-structured data, e.g., databases, memos, email, white papers, websites, ... • Enterprise 2.0 activities must integrate traditional data • Web-based SOA “applications” aggregate distributed functionality • via WSDL (Web Services Description Language), XSD (XML schema), … • dynamic, real-time data access • interconnection of multiple heterogeneous data sources and functions • but because of potential of introducing “exploits”, need guarantees!!! • Above all – ease of use! • legacy technology inertia very hard to overcome • needs strong incentives to change

37. Future – what do we need to do to make it happen? • Learn from historical experience and apply it • assign economic value to lessons learned • expect everyone to be able to write as well as read • develop simple, effective metaphors and models • Learn how to design well for group use • to support very large numbers of groups (scalability!) • make social software easy to understand and use, safe • Educate students and teach employees • in development and effective use of Web 2.0 tools • and applying Enterprise 2.0 principles

38. “To Infinity and Beyond…” 38