Auteur: mdr

This is the second article in a series about legendary tech inventors. The first article was written about Vannevar Bush: the inventor of the Memex. This one is about sir Tim Berners-Lee: inventor of the World Wide Web.

Connections like the human brain
Tim studied physics and was a son of mathematicians. His parents programmed the first computer: Mark I. With his father he had discussions about the idea how to make a computer intuitive and how it could make connections like the human brain.

Just like Vannevar Bush, sir Berners-Lee was triggered by making connections of information like the human brain: “anything being potentially connected with anything”.

Organization structure as metaphor of the web
In 1980 he started working at CERN (European Particle Physics Laboratory) in Geneva. In his sparetime, as a side-project, he started coding on Enquire: his first weblike idea. The name was inspired by a book title at his parent’s house. It had to be a portal to a world of information. The side-project was not only to work on his larger idea, but also to know the connections between people, projects and computers in the lab. Information at the lab was fragmented due to the large scale.

The organizational structure of CERN was a web-like structure. It had no hierarchical structure. Organize data like a traditional database was not suitable in this situation. With nodes and links (like a network), people, machines and experiments could be connected for documentation.

“Can the web be a new way of working?”

Tie different techniques together
Several people had similar concepts but they were never implemented. Also because it was not the right time for the particular inventions. Vannevar Bush with the memex, Ted Nelson invented Hypertext in 1956, Douglas Engelbart (the inventor of the computer mouse) made a online system for group work using hypertext and the Internet (by Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn) as used by the Web for the universal connection between computers. For Tim it was the task to tie these techniques, hypertext (common format to display documents), possibility of linking documents and the internet, together.

Web of acronyms
The basic components of the web are HTML, URI and HTTP: HTML (the hypertext markup language for documents), URI (uniform resource indicator) as the address and HTTP as the protocol to communicate between web-client (browser) and the webserver.

Universal and decentralized
Two important elements of the web are universal and decentralized. Before there was a universal system like hypertext, researchers had to restructure their information to share it with others. The importance of decentralization is that users don’t have to ask access to the information. Many companies run their own information structures internally. It was the vision of Tim to decentralize this to create an organic growth of ideas, technology and society. The web is not a company / organization or single network. It has to be a global, information space in which computers could function. Companies have to turn hypertext systems into web clients.

Another aspect of decentralization is that it has to run and maintained by enthousiasts due to source code contributions. Thereby recommendations were given, not standards or regulations.

From fragmentation to common understanding
The next step is to turn the web into a Semantic Web: from fragmentation to common understanding. First there was a universal way needed to structure and share documents. In the semantic web global standards are needed so machines (computers) can understand and make associations.

Intuition is solving problems without a well-defined logical method. It’s like brainstorming in a group. Solutions will not arrive by a logical path but by connections and associations. On the web this will evolve when users will make links between ideas. Like complement on half-formed ideas in documents of others. A form of group intuition will arise.

Current state of the world wide web
Nowadays, Tim sees the web is not what it has to be in the first place and he wants to bring it back to its roots.

One example is that a part of the web is run by big tech companies. These parts are centralized and the web infrastructure is not independent (cross-layer). Like silos.
He is working on several projects to take control back to the user. He created a protocol called Solid. With Solid, Personal Online data (PODs) is owned by the user itself. Not by tech companies.

The Memex

This is the first post in a series about legendary tech inventors. I will write about inventors on the cutting-edge of knowledge (work) and technology.

In the Atlantic in 1945 the article ‘As We May Think’ from Vannevar Bush was published. At that moment he was the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development where he had the coordination over six thousand American scientists. All working for the same cause in WWII.

“a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge” – Vannevar Bush

Dr. Vannevar Bush encourages his scientist colleagues to turn to the massive task of making the amount of knowledge accessible. He saw that the physical power of man had extended with new inventions, but not the power of the mind. The first objective after the war should be the development of instruments that will give man access to and command over the knowledge of ages. In his paper he calls for “a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge”. Knowledge evolves when ideas or records continuously are extended and consulted.

For that period of time Vannevar had forward-looking ideas. At that moment there was a growing availability of tools, but also with high production costs. There were multiple ways available for storage of data like film, photo, typewriting, stenotyping and a predecessor of speech recognition.

As a use case he describes a scientist in his laboratory who photograph and directly add comments where the time is automatically recorded to tie the records together. When the scientist is in the field a radio is connected to his recorder. In the evening he can talk his comments again into the record. His typed records and his photographs could be used later for consulting. In this use case Vannevar writes about the recording of data, computation and consulting of data.

Another use case is to compress the amount of the famous Brittanica Encyclopedia or a library of a million volumes into a desk.

He made an important distinction between creative and repetitive thoughts. This is still relevant. Repetitive thoughts are static and creative thoughts are continiously growing and changed.

Further in the article Vannevar thinks about logic for analysis, finding relationships in the amount of data and how to make automatic selections. He also thinks about the comparison to the human brain which operates by association instead of indexes.

The Memex: A future device for individual use: a mechanized private file and library

One of the most important concepts in the essay is the Memex (Memory extender). Which he described as a future device for individual use: a mechanized private file and library.
A list of features he describes:

• Storing of books, records and communications
• Mechanized
• Consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility
• A desk which could be operated from a distance
• Screen where the material can be projected
• Keyboard and a set of buttons and levers
• In one end the material is stored
• Possibility for insertion of data like books, pictures, newspapers and business correspondence
• Bookmarking by the storage of frequently-used codes

An essential feature he mentioned is to approach associative thinking. Which is created by the user to build a trail where multiple items could be permanently joined. For example an article in an Encyclopedia and then inserts his own comment.

Nowadays this is used in knowledge work and is also known as the ‘Second Brain’. A name coined by Tiago Forte in his corresponding book.

Walter Isaacson writes in his book The Innovators that Vannevar Bush with the Memex, and inventors that followed, worked on a personal connection between human and machine.

Later on, on these ideas where inventions build and inspired like Wikipedia (like the use case of the whole library or Brittanica Encyclopedia), the personal computer, and the world wide web. The next article in this series will be about the inventor of the WWW: Tim Berners-Lee.