That small moment in time
"We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities", said Tim Berners-Lee. This sounds like an insightful comment on the state of today's website fashion but it is, in fact, the conclusion of his visionary paper written in 1989.
The famous and highly-readable document "Information Management: A Proposal" is preserved in its entirety on the W3C website, along with a HTMLified version of it. Whilst you probably do not have the software any more to read the original Mac file, the HTML version remains as readable as ever, and is living proof of how the web has helped us overcome the obstacle of data continuity. In this document, Berners-Lee describes the problems of making sense of data, the problems of rigid information systems and complex organisational hierarchies, and the potential to arrange information into loose webs of documents, joined together by links.
It is also interesting to see how he acknowledges that there are others working with similar ideas, but key features of his proposal are that he moved away from the concept of proprietary software and formats, and also realised that for such a system to be useful it needed to be inherently multi-user, based around a web of servers, using open-ended addressing rather than having a centralised hierarchy controlling documents.
It should also be noted that this document quite clearly states that his vision wasn't limited to just text. "The other idea, which is independent and largely a question of technology and time, is of multimedia documents which include graphics, speech and video." He also goes on to describe how existing databases could be leveraged by creating gateway applications which transform databases into hypertext documents, something we also take for granted in 2014.
Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal:
www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
24th March 2014
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.