Domain time capsule: What the WorldWideWeb looked like in 1993

Twenty years ago, the WorldWideWeb was officially launched as a non-paid network of computers, interconnected via the hypertext protocol.

What was the ‘WWW’ map like in 1993 – at an era when the sole browser was Mosaic?

Believe it or not, TIME Magazine went digital that year, and while Yahoo did not exist yet, there were several central reference guides listing active web sites.

Here’s a time capsule into the past, from 1993, titled: Entering the World-Wide Web: A Guide to Cyberspace.

 

Kevin Hughes Honolulu Community College September 1993

Table of Contents

* What is the World-Wide Web?

* What is hypertext and hypermedia?

* What is the Internet?

* How was the Web created?

* How popular is the Web?

* What is Mosaic?

* What can Mosaic do?

* What is available on the Web?

* How does the Web work?

* What software is available?

* How can I get more information?

* General Web Information

* Information/Reports on Multimedia and Hypermedia

* Browsers Accessible by Telnet

* Obtaining Web Browsers and Servers

* Appendix A: A Hypermedia Timeline

* Appendix B: Interesting Places on the Web

* Appendix C:The World is Talking to Itself – Why Not Join in the
Conversation?

* About the Author

* Index/Glossary

What is the World-Wide Web?

For fifty years, people have dreamt of the concept of a universal
information database – data that would not only be accessible to people
around the world, but information that would link easily to other pieces of
information so that only the most important data would be quickly found by
a user. It was in the 1960’s when this idea was explored further, giving
rise to visions of a “docuverse” that people could swim through,
revolutionizing all aspects of human-information interaction, particularly
in the educational field. Only until now has the technology caught up with
these dreams, making it possible to implement them on a global scale.

The official description describes the World-Wide Web as a “wide-area
hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access
to a large universe of documents”. What the World-Wide Web (WWW, W3)
project has done is provide users on computer networks with a consistent
means to access a variety of media in a simplified fashion. Using a popular
software interface to the Web called Mosaic, the Web project has changed
the way people view and create information – it has created the first true
global hypermedia network.

What is hypertext and hypermedia?

The operation of the Web relies on hypertext as its means of interacting
with users. Hypertext is basically the same as regular text – it can be
stored, read, searched, or edited – with an important exception: hypertext
contains connections within the text to other documents.

For instance, suppose you were able to somehow select (with a mouse or with
your finger) the word “hypertext” in the sentence before this one. In a
hypertext system, you would then have one or more documents related to
hypertext appear before you – a history of hypertext, for example, or the
Websters definition of hypertext. These new texts would themselves have
links and connections to other documents – continually selecting text would
take you on a free-associative tour of information. In this way, hypertext
links, called hyperlinks, can create a complex virtual web of connections.

Hypermedia is hypertext with a difference – hypermedia documents contain
links not only to other pieces of text, but also to other forms of media –
sounds, images, and movies. Images themselves can be selected to link to
sounds or documents. Here are some simple examples of hypermedia:

* You are reading a text on the Hawaiian language. You select a Hawaiian
phrase, then hear the phrase as spoken in the native tongue.

* You are a law student studying the Hawaii Revised Statutes. By selecting
a passage, you find precedents from a 1920 Supreme Court ruling stored at
Cornell. Cross-referenced hyperlinks allow you to view any one of 520
related cases with audio annotations.

* Looking at a company’s floorplan, you are able to select an office by
touching a room. The employee’s name and picture appears with a list of
their current projects.

* You are a scientist doing work on the cooling of steel springs. By
selecting text in a research paper, you are able to view a
computer-generated movie of a cooling spring. By selecting a button you are
able to receive a program which will perform thermodynamic calculations.

* A student reading a digital version of an art magazine can select a work
to print or display in full. If the piece is a sculpture, she can request
to see a movie of the sculpture rotating. By interactively controlling the
movie, she can zoom in to see more detail.

The Web, although still in its early years, allows many of these examples
to work in real life. It facilitates the easy exchange of hypermedia
through networked environments from anything as small as two Macintoshes
connected together to something as large as the global Internet.

What is the Internet?

The Internet is the catch-all word used to describe the massive world-wide
network of computers. The word “internet” literally means “network of
networks”. In itself, the Internet is comprised of thousands of smaller
regional networks scattered throughout the globe. On any given day it
connects roughly 15 million users in over 50 countries. The World-Wide Web
is mostly used on the Internet. Although technically not the same thing,
the phrase “World-Wide Web” is quickly becoming synonymous with “Internet”.

How was the Web created?

The Web began in March 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (a collective of
European high-energy physics researchers) proposed the project to be used
as a means of transporting research and ideas effectively throughout the
organization. Effective communications was a goal of CERNs for many years,
as its members were located in a number of countries.

How popular is the Web?

From January to August 1993, the amount of network traffic (in bytes)
across the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) North American network
attributed to Web use multiplied by 414 times. The Web is now ranked 13th
of all network services in terms of sheer byte traffic. In January its rank
was 127. Today there are at least 100 hypertext Web servers in use
throughout the world. Since its inception, the CERN Web server traffic has
doubled every four months – twice the rate of Internet expansion.

Honolulu Community College officially announced their opening of their
hypermedia server – the first Web server in Hawaii – at the end of May
1993. By September of that year (after 105 days of service), they had
received over 23,000 requests for documents and over 112,000 requests for
assets from nearly 5,000 separate hosts on the network. From September 1 to
7 they received traffic from over 600 separate hosts, an all-time high. It
is expected that traffic will increase further as the school year begins
and student involvement in the Web increases.

Since the sites opening, HCC has received virtual visitors from Xerox,
Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple Computer, Cray, IBM, MIT’s Media Lab,
NEC, Sony, Fujitsu, Intel, Rockwell, Boeing, Honeywell, and AT&ampT (which
has been one of the most frequent visitors), among hundreds of other
corporate sites on the Internet.

Collegiate visitors have originated from campuses such as Stanford,
Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon, Cornell, MIT, Michigan State, Rutgers, Purdue,
Rice, Georgia Tech, Columbia, University of Texas, and Washington
University, as well as other campuses in the UK, Germany, and Denmark, to
name but a few.

Governmental visitors have come from various departments in NASA, including
their Jet Propulsion Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratories, the National Institute of Health, the Superconducting
Supercollider project, and the USDA, as well as government sites in
Singapore and Australia. A few dozen Army and Navy sites throughout the
world have browsed around as well.

Because HCC’s server began operation when there were relatively few such
sites in the world, and in part due to its popularity, the growth in
traffic has closely reflected the growth of the Web. Further analysis of
HCC’s server logs indicate the following breakdown in classifications:

Although it is impossible to know for sure, it can be guessed that the
largest segment roaming the World-Wide Web consists of four-year campus
populations within the United States.

What is Mosaic?

Months after CERN’s original proposa l, the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) began a project to create an interface
to the World-Wide Web. One of NCSA’s missions is to aid the scientific
research community by producing widely available, non-commercial software.
Another of its goals is to investigate new research technologies in the
hope that commercial interests will be able to profit from them. In these
ways, the Web project was quite appropriate. The NCSA’s Software Design
Group began work on a versatile, multi-platform interface to the World-Wide
Web, and called it Mosaic.

In the first half of 1993, the first version of NCSA’s Web browser was made
available to the Internet community. Because earlier beta versions were
distributed, Mosaic had developed a strong yet small following by the time
it was officially released.

Because of the number of traditional services it could handle, and due to
its easy, point-and-click hypermedia interface, Mosaic soon became the most
popular interface to the Web. Currently versions of Mosaic can run on Suns,
Silicon Graphics workstations, PCs running Microsoft Windows, Macintoshes,
and computers running other various forms of UNIX.

NCSA’s Mosaic for X windows.

What can Mosaic do?

Mosaic running on every supported computer should have the following
features:

* A consistent mouse-driven graphical interface.

* The ability to display hypertext and hypermedia documents.

* The ability to display electronic text in a variety of fonts.

* The ability to display text in bold, italic, or strikethrough styles.

* The ability to display layout elements such as paragraphs, lists,
numbered and bulleted lists, and quoted paragraphs.

* Support for sounds (Macintosh, Sun audio format, and others).

* Support for movies (MPEG-1 and QuickTime).

* The ability to display characters as defined in the ISO 8859 set (it can
display languages such as French, German, and Hawaiian).

* Interactive electronic forms support, with a variety of basic forms
elements, such as fields, check boxes, and radio buttons.

* Support for interactive graphics (in GIF or XBM format) of up to 256
colors within documents.

* The ability to make basic hypermedia links to and support for the
following network services: ftp, gopher, telnet, nntp, WAIS.

* The ability to extend its functionality by creating custom servers
(comparable to XCMDs in HyperCard).

* The ability to have other applications control its display remotely.

* The ability to broadcast its contents to a network of users running
multiplatform groupware such as NCSA’s Collage.

* Support for the current standards of HTTP and HTML.

* The ability to keep a history of travelled hyperlinks.

* The ability to store a list and retrieve a list of URLs for future use.

What is available on the Web?

Currently the Web offers the following through a hypertext, and in some
cases, hypermedia interface:

* Anything served through Gopher

* Anything served through WAIS (Wide-Area Information Service)

* Anything served through anonymous FTP sites

* Full Archie services (a FTP search service)

* Full Veronica services (a Gopher search service)

* Full CSO, X.500, and whois services (Internet phone book services)

* Full finger services (an Internet user lookup program)

* Any library system using PALS (a library database standard)

* Anything on Usenet

* Anything accessible through telnet

* Anything in hytelnet (a hypertext interface to telnet)

* Anything in techinfo or texinfo (forms of campus-wide information
services)

* Anything in hyper-g (a networked hypertext system in use throughout
Europe)

* Anything in the form of man pages

* HTML-formatted hypertext and hypermedia documents

How does the Web work?

The Web works under the popular client-server model. A Web server is a
program running on a computer whose only purpose is to serve documents to
other computers when asked to. A Web client is a program that interfaces
with the user and requests documents from a server as the user asks for
them. Because the server does a minimal amount of work (it does not perform
any calculations) and only operates when a document is requested, it puts a
minimal amount of workload on the computer running it.

Here’s an example of how the process works:

1 Running a Web client (also called a browser), the user selects a piece of
hypertext connected to another text – “The History of Computers”.

2 The Web client connects to a computer specified by a network address
somewhere on the Internet and asks that computers Web server for “The
History of Computers”.

3 The server responds by sending the text and any other media within that
text (pictures, sounds, or movies) to the users screen.

The World-Wide Web is composed of thousands of these virtual transactions
taking place per hour throughout the world, creating a web of information
flow.

Future Web servers will include encryption and client authentication
abilities – they will be able to send and receive secure data and be more
selective as to which clients receive information. This will allow freer
communications among Web users and will make sure that sensitive data is
kept private. It will be harder to compromise the security of commercial
servers and educational servers which wish to keep information local.
Improvements in security will facilitate the idea of “pay-per-view”
hypermedia, a concept which many commercial interests are currently
pursuing.

The language that Web clients and servers use to communicate with each
other is called the HyperText Transmission Protocol (HTTP). All Web clients
and servers must be able to speak HTTP in order to send and receive
hypermedia documents. For this reason, Web servers are often called HTTP
servers.

The standard language the Web uses for creating and recognizing hypermedia
documents is the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). It is loosely related
to, but technically not a subset of, the Standard Generalized Markup
Language (SGML), a document formatting language used widely in some
computing circles.

HTML is widely praised for its ease of use. Web documents are typically
written in HTML and are usually named with the suffix “.html”. HTML
documents are nothing more than standard 7-bit ASCII files with formatting
codes that contain information about layout (text styles, document titles,
paragraphs, lists) and hyperlinks. Many free software convertors are
available for translating documents in foreign formats to HTML.

The current HTML standard (HTML) supports basic hypermedia document
creation and layout, but for current use it is still limited. The latest
version of HTML, called HTML+, is still under development but will probably
be completely defined by the end of 1993. HTML+ will support interactive
forms, defined “hotspots” in images, more versatile layout and formatting
options and styles, and formatted tables, among many other improvements.

HTML uses what are called Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to represent
hypermedia links and links to network services within documents. It is
possible to represent nearly any file or service on the Internet with a
URL.

The first part of the URL (before the two slashes) specifies the method of
access. The second is typically the address of the computer the data or
service is located. Further parts may specify the names of files, the port
to connect to, or the text to search for in a database.

Here are some examples of URLs:

* file://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/sound.au – Retrieves a sound file and plays
it.

* file://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/picture.gif – Retrieves a picture and
displays it, either in a separate program or within a hypermedia document.

* file://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/directory/ – Displays a directorys contents.

* http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/directory/book.html – Connects to an HTTP
server and retrieves an HTML file.

* ftp://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/pub/file.txt – Opens an FTP connection to
pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu and retrieves a text file.

* gopher://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu – Connects to the Gopher at
pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu.

* telnet://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu:1234 – Telnets to pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu at
port 1234.

* news:alt.hypertext – Reads the latest Usenet news by connecting to a
user-specified news (NNTP) host and returns the articles in hypermedia
format.

Most Web browsers allow the user to specify a URL and connect to that
document or service. When selecting hypertext in an HTML document, the user
is actually sending a request to open a URL. In this way, hyperlinks can be
made not only to other texts and media, but also to other network services.
Web browsers are not simply Web clients, but are also full-featured FTP,
Gopher, and telnet clients.

HTML+ will include an email URL, so hyperlinks can be made to send email
automatically. For instance, selecting an email address in a piece of
hypertext would open a mail program, ready to send email to that address.

What software is available?

World-Wide Web clients (browsers) are available for the following platforms
and environments:

* Text-only (dumb) terminal, nearly any platform

* UNIX, text-only using curses, for SunOS 4, AIX, Alpha, Ultrix

* VMS

* X11/Motif, for IRIX (Silicon Graphics), SunOS 4, RS/6000, DEC Alpha/OSF
1, DEC Ultrix.

* NeXT, for NeXTStep 3.0

* IBM compatibles, 386 and above, under Microsoft Windows

* Macintosh computers, Classic and above

* Browsers written in perl are available.

* Browsers written for the emacs environment are available.

World-Wide Web servers are available for the following platforms and
environments:

* UNIX

* Perl

* Macintosh

* VM, VMS

For details on how to obtain Web client and server software, refer to the
section “How can I get more information?”

How can I get more information?

Most of this information is available on the Internet. In order to access
resources specified by in URL format, you may need to use a Web browser or
connect to a telnet site that provides a public-access browser.

General Web Information

Main CERN World-Wide Web page

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

Main NCSA Mosaic page

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/mosaic-docs.html

Information on WWW

http://www.bsdi.com/server/doc/web-info.html

The World-Wide Web FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file

by Nathan Torkington

http://www.vuw.ac.nz:80/non-local/gnat/www-faq.html

A list of World-Wide Web clients at CERN

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html

The “official” list of World-Wide Web servers at CERN

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/WWW/Servers.html

World-Wide Web newsgroup

comp.infosystems.www

World-Wide Web mailing lists

For general discussion:

send email to listserv@info.cern.ch, with “add www-announce” as the
body.

For developers and technical discussion:

send email to listserv@info.cern.ch, with “add www-talk” as the body.

How to write HTML

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

How to write Web gateways and servers

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html

HTML official specifications

http://info.cern.ch/pub/www/doc/html-spec.multi

HTML convertors

mail2html, converts electronic mailboxes to HTML documents

ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/dev

Word Perfect 5.1 to HTML convertor

http://journal.biology.carleton.ca:8001/Journal/background/ftp.sites.html

rtf2html, converts Rich Text Format (RTF) documents to HTML

file://oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu/public/unix/WWW

latex2html, converts LaTeX documents to HTML

http://cbl.leeds.ac.uk/nikos/tex2html/doc/latex2html/latex2html.html

HTML+ Document Type Definition (DTD)

ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/dev/htmlplus.dtd

Information/Reports on Multimedia and Hypermedia

Index to multimedia resources

http://cui_www.unige.ch/Chloe/MultimediaInfo/index.html

“Network Access to Multimedia Information”, June 1993

ftp ftp.ed.ac.uk, in directory /pub/mmaccess

This report summarizes the requirements of academic and research users
for network access to multimedia information.

“Computer Supported Cooperative Work Report”, July 1993

ftp gorgon.tft.tele.no, in directory /pub/groupware

This is a comprehensive list of all known collaborative software
packages and projects currently in use or under development.

“Hypermedia and Higher Education”, April 1993

gopher lewsun.idlw.ucl.ac.be, the /digests/IPCT menu.

IPCT, Interpersonal Computing and Technology, is an excellent journal
exploring the boundaries of education and high technology.

alt.hypertext Frequently Asked Questions list

gopher ftp.cs.berkeley.edu, on many other Gophers.

This list contains dozens of pointers to mailing lists, people, Internet
sites, groups, books, periodicals, bibliographies, and software related to
hypertext.

Browsers Accessible by Telnet

A comprehensive list of telnet-accessible clients

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/Bootstrap.html

telnet info.cern.ch

The simplest line mode browser.

telnet ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

A full screen browser “Lynx” which requires a vt100 terminal. Log in as
“www”.

telnet eies2.njit.edu

Log in as “www”. A full-screen browser.

telnet vms.huji.ac.il

Log in as “www”. A line-mode browser.

telnet sun.uakom.cs

Slovakia. Has a slow link, use from nearby.

telnet fserv.kfki.hu

Hungary. Has slow link, use from nearby. Login as “www”.

telnet info.funet.fi

Obtaining Web Browsers and Servers

ftp info.cern.ch, in directory /pub/www

Simple text-only browser, as well as the CERN HTTP server.

ftp aixtest.cc.ukans.edu, in directory /pub

Distribution for Lynx, a line-mode curses-based browser.

ftp ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu, in directory /Mosaic

Mosaic distribution, as well as the NCSA HTTP server.

ftp oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu. in directory /public/Mac

Macintosh server.

ftp fatty.law.cornell.edu, in directory /pub/LII/cello

Browser for Microsoft Windows.

Note: The alpha versions of Mosaic for Windows and for Macintosh are not
being distributed. To be on their alpha testers mailing lists, send mail to
mosaic-win@ncsa.uiuc.edu or mosaic-mac@ncsa.uiuc.edu. Completion for these
browsers is scheduled for November 1993.

Appendix A: A Hypermedia Timeline

1945

Vannevar Bush (The Science Advisor to President Roosevelt during World
War II) proposes MEMEX, a conceptual machine that can store vast amounts of
information, in which users have the ability to create information trails,
links of related texts and illustrations, which can be stored and used for
future reference.

1965

Ted Nelson coins the word hypertext.

1967

Andy van Dam and others build the Hypertext Editing System.

1968

Doug Engelbart demonstrates NLS, a hypertext system.

1975

ZOG (now KMS), a distributed hypermedia system, debuts at
Carnegie-Mellon.

1978

The Aspen Movie Map, the first hypermedia videodisc, shown at MIT.

1981

Ted Nelson conceptualizes “Xanadu”, a central, pay-per-document
hypertext database encompassing all written information.

1984

Telos introduces Filevision, a hypermedia database for the Macintosh

1985

Janet Walker creates the Symbolics Document Examiner.

1985

Intermedia, a hypermedia system, is conceived at Brown University by
Norman Meyrowitz and others.

1986

OWL introduces GUIDE, a hypermedia document browser.

1987

Apple Computers introduces HyperCard, the first widely available
personal hypermedia authoring system.

1987

Hypertext ’87 Workshop.

1989

Autodesk, a major CAD software manufacturer, takes on Xanadu as a
project.

1989

Tim Berners-Lee proposes World-Wide Web project.

1990

ECHT (European Conference on Hypertext).

1992

Autodesk drops the Xanadu project.

Apr 1993

International Workshop on Hypermedia and Hypertext Standards, Amsterdam.

Jun 1993

Mosaic 1.0 for X windows released by the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications.

Aug 1993

First World-Wide Web developers’ conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nov 1993

Hypertext Conference in Seattle, Washington.

For information email ht93@atc.boeing.com.

June 1994

World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia in Vancouver,
Canada.

For information email aace@virginia.edu.

Appendix B: Interesting Places on the Web

NCSA’s Demonstration Page

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/demo.html

WAIS Poetry Database

gopher://sunsite.unc.edu:70/7waissrc%3a/ref.d/indexes.d/poetry.src

HCC Email Directory

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/ emaild

University at Stony Brook’s Institute of Theoretical Physics Floorplan

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/floorplan.html

HCC Campus Map

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/hccmap/hccmap.html

HCC Building 2

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/bldg2/bldg2.html

Internet Talk Radio

http://www.cmf.nrl.navy.mil/radio/radio.html

Legal Information Institute

http://fatty.law.cornell.edu:80/usr2/wwwtext/lii.table.html

Indiana University School of Law

http://www.law.indiana.edu:80/law/lawsch.html

HCCs Technological Times

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/pubs/tech/tech.1.1/tech.1.1.html

HCCs 1992 Trades

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/pubs/trades/trades.91.92/trades.91.92.html

NCSA Publications

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Pubs/access/accessDir.html

Financial Executive Journal

http://fatty.law.cornell.edu.:80/usr2/wwwtext/nasdaq/nasdtoc.html

WWW EXPO Map

http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/expo/expo_map.html

Vatican Exhibit

http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/vatican.exhibit/Vatican.exhibit.html

Krannert Art Museum

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/UIUC/KrannertArtMuseum/KrannertArtHome.html

OTIS/CROSSWIRE Art Project

http://cui_www.unige.ch/OSG/OtisCrosswire/Finished/A.html

National Institute of Health Multimedia Lab

http://aka.dcrt.nih.gov:80/

HCCs Dinosaur Exhibit

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/dinos/dinos.1.html

Library PALS Gateway

http://lars.acc.stolaf.edu:9000/pals/gateway

HCCINFO Gopher

gopher://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/

UH Faculty Directory

gopher://nic.hawaii.net:70/11/Dir

Usenet Example

news:alt.hypertext

Archie at Nexor

http://web.nexor.co.uk/archieplex

HCC Faculty Directory

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/facd

UHLIB Telnet

telnet://uhlib.lib.hawaii.edu/

Hytelnet

http://info.cern.ch:8002/w3start.txt

WAIS Interface

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/Products/WAIS/Sources/Overview.html

City of Passau Tour

http://httpserver.forwiss.uni-passau.de/passau/stadtarchiv/fuehrung/drtreich/uebersicht.html

Guide to Australia

http://life.anu.edu.au/education/australia.html

Guide to New Zealand

http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/People/mjw/NZ/MainPage.html

Current US Surface Map

gopher://wx.atmos.uiuc.edu:70/11/Images/Surface%20Map

Michigan State University Weather Movies

http://rs560.cl.msu.edu/weather

School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/

Carnegie-Mellon

http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/FrontDoor.html

Personal Page at Carnegie-Mellon

http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/jblythe/Mosaic/jblythe-home.html

MITs Student Information Processing Board Server

http://www.mit.edu:8001/

Digital Equipment Corporation

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/hypertext/gatekeeper.home.html

Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center)

http://pubweb.parc.xerox.com:80/

UCLA CAD Server

http://cad.ucla.edu/

Eitech

http://eitech.com/

HCC Interactive Tour

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/tour/start.html

Note: This is a prototype service and may be subject to change.

NetNews

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/netnews/netnews.html

Note: This is a prototype service and may be subject to change.

Network Services List

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/netservices/netservices.html

Hawaiian Network Services List

http://pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu/netservices/local.html

Appendix C: The World is Talking to Itself – Why Not Join in the
Conversation?

In February 1992, the University of Hawaii Board of Regents adopted a
visionary document that had been well-researched by committees made up of
some of the UH system’s best information technology workers: the Strategic
Plan for Information Technology. The Plan’s first recommended action was to
establish a systemwide Chief Information Officer (CIO), an individual who
would help direct and orchestrate all areas of UH information technology at
the highest level. Another priority action recommended that the existing
technology advisory committee infrastructures be changed to adequately
allow “faculty, student, executive, and staff input” into all
decision-making that affected the direction of information technology (UH
1992:21). It was proposed that this action be completed by the end of 1992.

In all, the Strategic Plan for information Technology (SPIT), outlined 9
strategic objectives and over 30 priority actions, each with a timeframe
ranging from 1992 to 1997. One action called for the provision of “full
systemwide electronic mail” and “full access to all students”, with the
timeframe set at 1992 to 1993 (UH 1992:22). Another aimed to rehaul the
University’s fiscal information system sometime during 1992 to 1996. Yet
another proposed to develop by 1994 technology demonstration centers on
every campus to promote the sharing of “developments, discoveries, and
experience” (UH 1992:26-27). These centers would be supported as much as
possible from manufacturers and vendors.

Today, as wonderous developments occur within the worlds information
technology community, we must ask ourselves, what ever happened to SPIT?
There are no signs of a new, improved infrastructure, no CIO, no systemwide
access, no demonstration centers, and very little sharing of developments,
discoveries, or experience.

Now the UH Manoa campus is in danger of losing federal funding for research
– their life blood – very soon, if their accounting system is not made more
efficient and up-to-date (Hotema 1993). Did anyone read the paragraph in
SPIT that described the fiscal information system as a “20-year old batch
system…[that] does not begin to address end-user needs for timely
information” (UH 1992:18)? Planning is supposed to help anticipate future
needs before a crisis emerges.

It would be unfair to wholly blame the system for its failings, considering
that proper planning anticipating this situation was available well in
advance. Funding within the UH organization is lopsided and untimely, and
has been one of the biggest roadblocks for the achievement of SPIT’s goals.
Timely allocation of monies within the system is of the utmost importance.
Every week missed in the development of contemporary information technology
today may cost you months, if not years, in the near future.

For UH and the DOE to fulfill their mission of educating the information
workers of tomorrow, it is in their best interests to listen to expert
analysis regarding their use, or abuse, of high technology. Education is a
field that stands to be completely revolutionized by the ever-onward march
of information and network technology.

Hawaii as a state needs to address its problems seriously if it is to
prepare for the future adequately. Witness the 30 jobs recently cut at
Intelect (Smith 1993), once one of Oahu’s high-technology success stories.
The shrinkage of the company is even more tragic when one considers the
product that Intelect is developing: digital switches, the key to
high-speed communications. Without nanosecond-fast digital switches to
relay data among different network paths, it is impossible to conceive of
fiber optics and ISDN on any large scale.

And who amongst us cares about networks? Time magazine certainly does,
evidenced by the fact that they have become the first national magazine
ever to be fully offered online. Users can also talk to each other about
the magazine interactively if they wish, or send email to the editor
(Briefs 1993). Or ask the National Science Foundation, which in December
1992 upgraded the speed of their network – which connects every major
graduate, research, and four-year university in United States – to 45
megabits per second, fast enough to send a 20-volume encyclopedia from
coast to coast in less than 23 seconds (NSF 1992). Or ask the California
assembly, which unanimously passed Bill AB1624, the first such legislature
of its kind, allowing full access to legislative records and bills to users
on the Internet – all 15 million of them (Warren 1993).

Yet in a 1991-1992 ranking of 50 states by student-to-computer ratios,
Hawaii came in third to last (Kondracke 1992). These numbers won’t mean a
thing if there is no support for or understanding of computers within the
classroom. The [Exists]450,000 Hawaii’s legislature earmarked for the
multimedia industry via MIDAS (Multimedia Indus try Development for
Academic Software) is laudable (HSSC 1993), but as currently proposed it
falls short of its mark. Much of the state’s struggling multimedia industry
has little experience in the field of academic software development,
educators with good ideas are forced to jump through bureaucratic hoops to
receive minimal funding, and there are too few true software developers in
Hawaii to build up anything near the critical mass needed to begin an
enterprise – they all left for the mainland a long time ago.

What is a state to do?

Provide continued support for those doing the educating. The solution to
computer illiteracy will not come from simply throwing money at the
problem. It must come from a fundamental change in the way educators and
administrators view academic computing. First and foremost, regular,
comprehensive training of faculty and staff must be made available. A
teacher who uses a [Exists]5,000 computer to teach typing is ultimately
worth less than a computer literate teacher who makes the most out of a
[Exists]500 computer. Every dollar invested in providing the workhorses of
the educational system the means to use today’s technology to the fullest
equals a thousand dollar return in the future.

Treat computer literacy for what it is – a necessary skill. Implement
minimum computer literacy requirements from kindergarten to college.
Introduce core classes at every level. It is no longer enough to teach
students how to find an article in a newpaper or how to use the Dewey
Decimal System. They must learn to navigate library databases and the
worldwide networks, to search CD-ROMs and scan electronic texts. Institute
new programs and degrees in key fields – object-oriented programming,
multimedia design, administrative networking, desktop publishing. Educators
must take a fresh approach to curriculua that technology will completely
turn upside down – commercial art, printing, information science. Place
students in control of technology; give them the opportunity to take the
ball and run with it. Twenty years from now, they will take it anyway.

Improve communications. It would be pitiable to see Hawaii’s information
age wither away due to a lack of communication. Effective communications
and infrastructure was one of the key themes of SPIT. These themes continue
to make themselves heard. Better public support and education can help
funding. Better funding can help improve the UH network. Better
communications between community colleges, where a growing majority of
Hawaii’s students now go (UH Fall 1992), and the K-12 community can lead to
higher enrollment and a beneficial gathering of alternative education
experience. Every campus must organize effectively and take action as a
system – the weakest link in this chain continues to be middle management.
Are those providing the services communicating to those receiving the
services?

Prevent the rise of the technological underclass. It is unsettling to see
only the most expensive campuses and the most well-funded programs use the
best technology. Although community colleges now serve as the only stop
before the workplace for many students, they remain behind in the effective
transfer of technological skills to these new workers. For years Hawaii FYI
has provided an incredible wealth of state information and services to the
public, but its heaviest use has been attributed to interactive talk
services (Okamoto 1993). FYI is a good thing, but it can be made so much
more effective by improving both its interface and its presentation to the
public. Improve support for community colleges and publicly available
networks, and those without become those that can. It is not enough to
depend on any one project – such as Maui’s supercomputer endeavor – to
bring true access for all to Hawaii. True success rests upon a committment
to equal access within the educational, legislative, and commercial sectors
alike.

Provide more support and incentive for local commercial network providers.
Nobody wants to see the day when hundreds of businesses end up having to
use the UH network because there is no feasible commercial alternative.
Public access providers such as Pegasus and Hawaii FYI must be encourged to
grow through legislation. Better networking among Hawaii’s high-tech
incubators and research facilities must be established if there is to be
any effective transfer of research information to growing high-tech
companies. But due to the fact that these incubators are commercial in
nature and yet do UH research, this creates a gray area that hampers
development of a worthwhile communications network. By eliminating gray
areas through legislation, new industries will grow and prosper. The state
must encourage the development of dedicated network servers for businesses
and federal use if serious commercialization is to occur.

There are a few good signs that Hawaii is on the right track. The
outstanding DOE project to introduce computers and networks into the
elementary schools has changed the way many in the system view education.
One principal was so elated she grabbed a shovel and helped others in the
community dig the trenches for her elementary school’s network cabling.
Benjamin Parker Elementary boasts campus-wide high-speed fiber optic
hardware, some of which was donated at great expense by vendors (Dengler
1993). Ask any instructor there and they will proudly show you multimedia
essays on networking created by its students. The DOE hopes that one day
every elementary school will be connected to the Internet – a good sign
that true global education for all students may not be not far off. Bishop
Museum is now on the Internet, too. By offering historical and cultural
information not just to the public but to the rest of the world, they are
doing a great service to Hawaii’s culture and legacy.

Throughout the rest of the world, people are educating each other globally
about their home countries and culture. You can find hypermedia guides to
Australia, New Zealand, and the city of Passau, Germany on the Internet.
Companies are providing online book catalogs, electronic magazines, and
headline news services. Individuals are creating virtual museums, public
art galleries, and educational exhibits. Visitors from 25 countries have
visited Honolulu Community College’s hypermedia site to see what it has to
offer. The world is talking to itself; why not join in the conversation?

There are thousands of good resources on the Internet. The day will come
when it will no longer be feasible for any state to ignore the wealth of
this global network. By providing support and giving attention to key areas
in its educational, commercial, and public access systems, Hawaii can learn
to make good use of its struggling high-tech industries. If it can provide
a strategic plan for information technology of its own – and carry it out
properly – it stands to make good on the opportunities of today and the
promises of the future.

References

Business Briefs. (1993, September 11). Time magazine goes Online. The
Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu, HI.

Dengler, Aaron. (1993, March 23). DOE Projects: Email LAN Pilot – Building
Block for DOE Network. Lecture presented at the Hawaii Information Network
and Technology Symposium 5, Honolulu, HI.

Hawaii Software Service Center. (1993, July 14). Request for Information:
Multimedia Industry Development for Academic Software. Honolulu, HI.

Hotema, Vickie. (1993, September 8). UH accounting system on hold. Ka Leo O
Hawai’i, Honolulu, HI.

Kondracke, Morton. (1992, September). The Official Word. Macworld, p.234.

National Science Foundation. (December 1992). National Science Foundation
Network achieves major milestone. Usenet, alt.bbs.internet.

Okamoto, Barbara. (1993, March 23). Is There Community Now? New Market
Research in the Electronic Services Industry. Lecture presented at the
Hawaii Information Network and Technology Symposium 5, Honolulu, HI.

Smith, Kit. (1993, September 11). High-tech firm cuts 70 employees from
Oahu plant. The Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu, HI.

University of Hawaii. (1992, February). Strategic Plan for Information
Technology. Office of Information Technology, Honolulu, HI, 18-22, 26-27.

University of Hawaii. (1992). Fall 1992 Opening Enrollment Highlights. UH
Gopher, gopher.hawaii.edu.

Warren, Jim. (1993, September 8). CALIF E-ACCESS BILL (AB #1624) PASSES!!!
Computer Underground Digest 5.70.

About the Author

For the last two years Kevin Hughes has been working as a student systems
programmer with Dr. Ken Hensarling, Honolulu Community College’s Director
of Academic Computing. He designed and implemented HCC’s World-Wide Web
site and is currently doing freelance graphics and programming work for
various companies and organizations in Hawaii. He can be reached through
the Internet as kevinh@pulua.hcc.hawaii.edu.

?Index/Glossary

A

Archie

A network service that searches FTP sites for files.

B

browser

Software that provides an interface to the World-Wide Web.

C

CERN

The European collective of high-energy physics researchers (European
Organization for Nuclear Research).

client

A computer or program requests a service of another computer or program.

client-server model

A structure in which programs use and provide distributed services.

Collage

Collaborative (shared whiteboard) software developed by the NCSA.

CSO

Central Services Organization. A service which facilitates user and
address lookup in databases.

D

Doug Engelbart

The inventor of many common devices and ideas used in computing today,
including the mouse.

F

finger

A service that responds to queries and retrieves user information
remotely.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. A common method of transferring files across
networks.

G

Gopher

A versatile menu-driven information service.

H

Honolulu Community College

HTML+

The latest version of HTML.

hyper-g

A distributed hypertext system mostly popular in Europe.

HyperCard

A personal hypermedia/multimedia creation system for use on Apple
Computers.

hyperlinks

Connections between hypermedia or hypertext documents and other media.

hypermedia

Hypertext that includes or links to other forms of media.

hypertext

Text that, when selected, has the ability to present connected
documents.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

The standard language used for creating hypermedia documents within the
World-Wide Web.

HyperText Transmission Protocol (HTTP)

The standard language that World-Wide Web clients and servers use to
communicate.

hytelnet

A hypertext interface to telnet.

I

Internet

The global collective of computer networks.

M

Mosaic

A mouse-driven interface to the World-Wide Web developed by the NCSA.

N

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

A federally-funded organization whose mission is to develop and research
high-technology resources for the scientific community.

National Science Foundation (NSF)

A federally-funded organization that manages the NSFnet, which connects
every major research institution and campus in the United States.

NNTP

News Network Transfer Protocol. A common method by which articles over
Usenet are transferred.

P

PALS

A standard library database interface.

S

server

A program which provides a service to other client programs.

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language. A generic language for
representing documents.

Software Design Group

The group within NCSA that is responsible for designing computer
applications.

T

techinfo

A common campus-wide information system developed at MIT.

Ted Nelson

The inventor of many common ideas related to hypertext, including the
word “hypertext” itself.

telnet

A program which allows users to remotely use computers across networks.

texinfo

A common campus-wide information system.

Tim Berners-Lee

The inventor of the World-Wide Web.

U

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)

Standardized formatted entities within HTML documents which specify a
network service or document to link to.

Usenet

The global news-reading network.

V

Vannevar Bush

Originator of the concept of hypertext.

Veronica

A network service that allows users to search Gopher systems for
documents.

W

WAIS

Wide-Area Information Service. A service which allows users to
intelligently search for information among databases distributed throughout
the Internet.

whois

A name lookup service.

World-Wide Web

The initiative to create a universal, hypermedia-based method of access
to information. Also used to refer to the Internet.

X

X.500

A standard which defines electronic mail directory services. Mostly used
in Europe.

Third Edition: September 16, 1993

The opinions stated in this document are solely those of the author and in
no way represent the views of the University of Hawaii or Honolulu
Community College.

This document is Copyright (c) 1993 by Kevin Hughes. It may be freely
distributed in any format as long as this disclaimer is included and the
textual contents are not altered. Copies of this document can be obtained
by contacting Ken Hensarling at (808) 845-9291.

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