Why The Web

Research Report by Tony Smith

for Master of Science (Science in Society)

Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne

submitted 27 April 1995

and

for supplementary background to consultancies:

Sandery & Smith

Computer-based education and communications

for the Open Learning Agency of Australia

Tinkler Mitchell Lepani

The technological infrastructure in education and the professional development and support of educators and trainers in the information and communication technologies

for the Employment and Skills Formation Council Project of the National Board of Employment, Education and Training

The Short Answers

The Web was not built from the ground up, but was built as a modest extra layer upon a vast collection of preestablished technologies.
The Web was built by more efficient methods than those used in planned commercial developments.
A URL provides a human-readable and printable way of addressing any information resource on the Internet.
The climate for the Web has been established by a succession of visions, particularly those of Ted Nelson, Xerox PARC, and William Gibson.
Marc Andreessen actually built a user-friendly graphical interface to the Web.
Countless ‘newbies’ rapidly found their own uses for the Web.

Why The Web was reformatted for the Web on 19-20 May 2007 from its original idiosynchratic print layout. No attempt has yet been made to reverify the many 12 year old URLs contained herein, so there are correspondingly no clickable external links. Further improvements to navigation are unlikely to be introduced before this is further converted for delivery by a suitable content management system.

Correspondence