2014/3/17 「改變全世界 網路誕生25周年」

改變全世界　網路誕生25周年

摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報                        2014/3/14

2014-03-13 Web only 作者：經濟學人

圖片來源：flickr.com/photos/dirkvorderstrasse/

全球資訊網在3月12日渡過了它的25周年慶，但那個日子只是小小的里程碑：當時還在歐洲核子研究組織（CERN）工作的柏納李（Tim Berners-Lee），將一套網路化、連結化的資訊系統提案交給管理階層。其主要目標是利用數位資訊，追蹤越來越缺乏組織的計畫細節。他解釋了已經因為尼爾森（Ted Nelson）而廣為流傳的超文本概念，並提出諸多問題的解決方案，例如作業系統和軟體間的互連性等。

一如多數天才時刻，他的洞見並沒有立刻獲得賞識。反之，柏納李回到實驗室，並在18個月後，與卡里奧（Robert Cailliau）一同提出更完整詳細的版本。卡里奧為修訂版增加了更多技術和實務基礎，但在柏納李成為網路傳教士之際，大部分人並不知道他在發展初期所扮演的角色。

1990年10月版草案（實際日期為11月）沒那麼受人贊揚，但它更清楚、更明確地提出今日仍在使用的主要網路元件。幾個月後，柏納李拼揍出網頁瀏覽器和伺服器；但一直得等到1991年8月6日，那個網頁才公諸於世，CERN的網頁也第一次能在機構外部取用。

並沒有太多人知道，尼爾森將超文本想像為雙向連結：所有的終點都可以指向回起點。至今，網路上缺乏原作者姓名標示仍舊讓人煩心。柏納李的原始提案中，有個目標一直到部落格、維基等事物普及後才得以完全實現：讓修改、新增、刪除內容，和閱讀內容一樣簡單。

網路最重要的里程碑，或許就是我們忘記這些特定日期的時刻。許多年輕人已經不記得網路出現之前的時代，有個同事的小孩覺得每片玻璃都該具備互動性；他們實在無法想像，曾經，這個世界的知識並不是時時刻刻都在你的指尖。

柏納李的天才之處並非「發明」網路；他站在尼爾森、CERN的管理階層、卡里奧等許多人的肩頭之上。反之，他交出提案之後的日子才該頌揚──柏納李全心投入網路的成熟和轉型。1989年3月的那份文件是網路的根源，但持續變革造就了網路的成功。（黃維德譯）

©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2014

The Economist

Internet history

World wide whatever

By The Economist

From The Economist

Published: March 13, 2014

Mar 11th 2014, 22:30 by G.F. | SEATTLE

EVERYBODY loves an anniversary, as it is a dune in the sands of time where someone puts in a stick, turns around and surveys the scope of the past. These milestones are beloved of media, The Economist included, as they provide a hook on which to hang relevant insight. Thus, the World Wide Web is said to hit its 25th orbit around the sun on March 12th, and articles on the subject have already come forth in great profusion.

But the celebrated date is only a minor milestone: it's the "How I Met Your Mother" moment in which Tim Berners-Lee, then at the Swiss physics research institute CERN and now a knight and world celebrity, submitted his proposalfor a networked, linked information system to his management. It was mostly about tracking the minutiae of projects with digital resources that were already growing disorganised and out of hand. He explained hypertext, a concept in wide distribution already due to Ted Nelson's writings. It identified and proposed solutions for a number of different problems, including the issue of interconnection among disparate operating systems and software that could not readily exchange data at that time.

As with most moments of genius, his insight and synthesis was not immediately recognised—nor accepted.

Rather, Mr Berners-Lee was sent back to his lab, and 18 months later, with Robert Cailliau, released a more fully fleshed-out version. Mr Cailliau, who provided a more technical and practical basis in the revision, has not been quite as recognised for his early role as Mr Berners-Lee became the web's evangelist and advocate.

The October 1990 draft(dated November) is less celebrated, even though it contained more clearly and explicitly the primary components that remain in use today. This includes the abstraction of the location of a resource from a method of identifying it: the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). (A URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, more specifically identifies how to retrieve a URI via a network by specifying a protocol, like http for the web, and the domain name or server name on which the resource is located.)

A few months later, Mr Berners-Lee had cobbled together a working web browser and server, and could view webpages. However, it wasn't until August 6th, 1991, that the web went public, and the ability to retrieve a CERN webpage outside of the organisation was first available. (This newspaper hailed that event's 20th anniversary.)

Less well-recognised in the fanfare today is that Mr Nelson conceived of hypertext as a two-way linkage: all destinations would point back to origins. The lack of attribution on the web still niggles. And Mr Berners-Lee's original proposal dealt with what didn't fully come into existence until blogs, wikis and the like became widely available: the ability to write as easily through his medium (change, add, delete) as it was to read.

The most important milestone that we celebrate associated with the web may be when we simply forget these arbitrary founding dates altogether. Your correspondent has many younger members among his acquaintance who cannot remember a time before the internet and the web; Babbage's children, six and nine years old, expect every bit of glass to be interactive and stream video. They find it risible that there was a time that one could be out and about and not have the entire world's public knowledge at one's fingertips.

The genius of Mr Berners-Lee was shown not so much by "inventing" the web; he stood on the shoulders of Mr Nelson. CERN's indulgent management, Mr Cailliau and many others facilitated the expertise and time needed for it to come into being.

Rather, the time since the proposal was submitted should be celebrated—the period in which the web's father devoted himself to fostering its maturity, adoption and transformation. The web's roots lie in the March 1989 paper, but its success came from continuous reinvention afterwards.

©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2014