Curso: Sistemas de Informação Turno: Noturno

Disciplina: Teoria Geral de Sistemas

1 Introduction
1. When you read this book, you, without doubt, already know what the World Wide Web is and
have used it extensively. The World Wide Web (or the Web for short) has impacted almost
every aspect of our lives. It is the biggest and most widely known information source that is
easily accessible and searchable. It consists of billions of interconnected documents (called
Web pages) which are authored by millions of people. Since its inception, the Web has
dramatically changed our information seeking behavior. Before the Web, finding information
meant asking a friend or an expert, or buying/borrowing a book to read. However, with the
Web, everything is just a few clicks away from the comfort of our homes or offices. We can not
only find needed information on the Web, but also easily share our information and knowledge
with others.
2. The Web has also become an important channel for conducting businesses. We can buy
almost anything from online stores without needing to go to a physical shop. The Web also
provides a convenient means for us to communicate with each other, to express our views and
opinions, and to discuss with people from anywhere in the world. The Web is truly a virtual
society. In this first chapter, we introduce the Web, its history, and the topics that we will study
in this book.

1.1 What is the World Wide Web?

3. The World Wide Web is officially defined as a “wide-area hypermedia information retrieval
initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.” In simpler terms,
the Web is an Internet-based computer network that allows users of one computer to access
information stored on another through the world-wide network called the Internet.
4. The Web's implementation follows a standard client-server model. In this model, a user relies
on a program (called the client) to connect to a remote machine (called the server) where the
data is stored. Navigating through the Web is done by means of a client program called the
browser, e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc. Web browsers work by
sending requests to remote servers for information and then inter- preting the returned
documents written in HTML and laying out the text and graphics on the user’s computer
screen on the client side.
5. The operation of the Web relies on the structure of its hypertext documents. Hypertext allows
Web page authors to link their documents to other related documents residing on computers
anywhere in the world. To view these documents, one simply follows the links (called
hyperlinks).
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 Curso: Sistemas de Informação Turno: Noturno
Disciplina: Teoria Geral de Sistemas
Texto: Internet, transcrito de Liu (2011)

6. The idea of hypertext was invented by Ted Nelson in 1965 [14], who also created the well
known hypertext system Xanadu (http://xanadu.com/). Hypertext that also allows other media
(e.g., image, audio and video files) is called hypermedia.

1.2 A Brief History of the Web and the Internet

7. Creation of the Web: The Web was invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee, who, at that time,
worked at CERN (Centre European pour la Recherche Nucleaire, or European Laboratory for
Particle Physics) in Switzerland. He coined the term “World Wide Web,” wrote the first World
Wide Web server, httpd, and the first client program (a browser and editor), “WorldWideWeb.”
8. It began in March 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal titled “Information
Management: A Proposal” to his superiors at CERN. In the proposal, he discussed the
disadvantages of hierarchical information organization and outlined the advantages of a
hypertext-based system. The proposal called for a simple protocol that could request
information stored in remote computer systems through networks, and for a scheme by which
information could be exchanged in a common format and documents of individuals could be
linked by hyperlinks to other documents. It also proposed methods for reading text and
graphics using the display technology at CERN at that time. The proposal essentially outlined
a distributed hypertext system, which is the basic architecture of the Web.
9. Initially, the proposal did not receive the needed support. However, in 1990, Berners-Lee re-
circulated the proposal and received the support to begin the work. With this project, Berners-
Lee and his team at CERN laid the foundation for the future development of the Web as a
distributed hypertext system. They introduced their server and browser, the protocol used for
communication between clients and the server, the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) used for authoring Web documents, and the Universal
Resource Locator (URL). And so it began.
10. Mosaic and Netscape Browsers: The next significant event in the development of the Web
was the arrival of Mosaic. In February of 1993, Marc Andreesen from the University of Illinois’
NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) and his team released the first
"Mosaic for X" graphical Web browser for UNIX. A few months later, different versions of
Mosaic were released for Macintosh and Windows operating systems. This was an important
event. For the first time, a Web client, with a consistent and simple point-and-click graphical
user interface, was implemented
11. for the three most popular operating systems available at the time. It soon made big splashes
outside the academic circle where it had begun. In mid-1994, Silicon Graphics founder Jim
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 Curso: Sistemas de Informação Turno: Noturno
Disciplina: Teoria Geral de Sistemas
Texto: Internet, transcrito de Liu (2011)

Clark collaborated with Marc Andreessen, and they founded the company Mosaic
Communications (later renamed as Netscape Communications). Within a few months, the
Netscape browser was released to the public, which started the explosive growth of the Web.
The Internet Explorer from Microsoft entered the market in August, 1995 and began to
challenge Netscape.
12. The creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee followed by the release of the Mosaic
browser are often regarded as the two most significant contributing factors to the success and
popularity of the Web.
13. Internet: The Web would not be possible without the Internet, which provides the
communication network for the Web to function. The Internet started with the computer
network ARPANET in the Cold War era. It was produced as the result of a project in the United
States aiming at maintaining control over its missiles and bombers after a nuclear attack. It
was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which was part of the
Department of Defense in the United States. The first ARPANET connections were made in
1969, and in 1972, it was demonstrated at the First International Conference on Computers
and Communication, held in Washington D.C. At the conference, ARPA scientists linked
together computers from 40 different locations.
14. In 1973, Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn started to develop the protocol later to be called TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). In the next year, they published the paper
“Transmission Control Protocol”, which marked the beginning of TCP/IP. This new protocol
allowed diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other. In
subsequent years, many networks were built, and many competing techniques and protocols
were proposed and developed. However, ARPANET was still the backbone to the entire
system. During the period, the network scene was chaotic. In 1982, the TCP/IP was finally
adopted, and the Internet, which is a connected set of networks using the TCP/IP protocol,
was born.
15. Search Engines: With information being shared worldwide, there was a need for individuals to
find information in an orderly and efficient manner. Thus began the development of search
engines. The search system Excite was introduced in 1993 by six Stanford University
students. EINet Galaxy was established in 1994 as part of the MCC Research Consortium at
the University of Texas. Jerry Yang and David Filo created Yahoo! in 1994, which started out
as a listing of their favorite Web sites, and offered directory search. In subsequent years, many
search systems emerged, e.g., Lycos, Inforseek, AltaVista, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, Northernlight,
etc.

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 Curso: Sistemas de Informação Turno: Noturno
Disciplina: Teoria Geral de Sistemas
Texto: Internet, transcrito de Liu (2011)

16. Google was launched in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page based on their research project
at Stanford University. Microsoft started to commit to search in 2003, and launched the MSN
search engine in spring 2005 (which is now called Bing). Yahoo! provided a general search
capability in 2004 after it purchased Inktomi in 2003.
17. W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium): W3C was formed in the December of 1994 by MIT
and CERN as an international organization to lead the development of the Web. W3C's main
objective was “to promote standards for the evolution of the Web and interoperability between
WWW products by producing specifications and reference software.” The first International
Conference on World Wide Web (WWW) was also held in 1994, which has been a yearly
event ever since.
18. From 1995 to 2001, the growth of the Web boomed. Investors saw commercial opportunities
and became involved. Numerous businesses started on the Web, which led to irrational
developments. Finally, the bubble burst in 2001. However, the development of the Web was
not stopped, but has only become more rational since.

Referência

O texto acima foi transcrito do Livro:

Liu, B. (2011). Web Data Mining - Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data - Second Edition -ISBN
978-3-642-19459-7. Verlag Berlin Heidelberg: Spring.

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