Being on/of The Web

A Victorian era book,"Enquire Within Upon Everything," embodied the best technology of its time to organize, via a crude hypertext system, a collection of knowledge. In the hands of a young boy growing up in the 1960s, the book inspired a spirit of magic, wonder, and the vision of an open portal to the world of information. When that boy grew up, he invented the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee's original vision for the web was it "being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together."

This year marks the 25th year since the web's invention. Like many long road trips one might ask, "Are we there yet?" The merging of this digital space with what we live and do brings new light to the basic question of who our [digital] self is and alters the nature of what we knew once as expertise. While only a one letter difference between prepositions, a vast gulf lies between the concept of information being *on* the web and our ways of thinking being "of" the web. Explore with me through a two decade lens of web "of-ness" the importance of not only web thinking, maker culture, but also the power of sharing our own digital self-narration. And then maybe, we might be almost there yet.

Invited keynote for Shar-e-fest 2014, Hamilton, New Zealand

Transcript

1. Being on/of the Web go.cogdog.it/of-the-web Alan Levine • cogdog.info
4. on / of At or near; adjacent to. Covering. In the state of being active. To indicate a means or medium. Expressing origin. Expressing agency. Expressing composition, substance. Expressing possession.
5. What? flickr photo by Foxicat http://flickr.com/photos/foxicat/288159262/
6. Who? flickr photo by silentvale photos http://flickr.com/photos/sv_photos/324445901
7. How? modified from creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by cogdogblog: http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/465839784
8. The Computer Chronicles - The Internet (1993) http://youtu.be/U_o8gerare0
9. flickr photo by Linus Gelber https://www.flickr.com/photos/linus/168956768/
21. one vague but exciting idea
22. cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by theirhistory: http://flickr.com/photos/22326055@N06/4332455554/
23. Like a house, every paragraph in "Enquire Within" has its number,—and the Index is the Directory which will explain what Facts, Hints, and Instructions inhabit that number.
27. Suggestion of magic... a portal to the world of information
28. The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information
29. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. The World Wide Web: A very short personal history by Tim Berners-Lee May 7, 1998 http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html This proposal concerns the management of general information about accelerators at CERN. It discusses the problems of loss of information about complex evolving systems and derives a solution based on a distributed hypertext system.
31. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. The World Wide Web: A very short personal history by Tim Berners-Lee May 7, 1998 http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html
32. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together. The World Wide Web: A very short personal history by Tim Berners-Lee May 7, 1998 http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html
33. Dexter’s Picture http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/19lzy5/this_is_my_son_dexter_he_picked_these_flowers/
34. The Computer Chronicles - The Internet (1993) http://youtu.be/U_o8gerare0
40. Námsefnisgerð í HTML
41. www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut
42. thor.vma.is/tut/
44. www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut mcli.cogdogblog.com/tut
45. The Computer Chronicles - The Internet (1993) http://youtu.be/U_o8gerare0
46. Since then I’ve spoken a few times about the idea that by narrating our work, we can perhaps restore some of what was lost when factories and then offices made work opaque and not easily observable. Software developers are in the vanguard of this reintegration, because our work processes as well as our work processes are fully mediated by digital networks. But it can happen in other lines of work too, and I’m sure it will.
49. ds106.us
50. umw.domains
51. reclaimhosting.com
52. connectedcourses.net
53. stories.cogdogblog.com
54. creative commons licensed (BY) flickr photo by Abby Lanes: http://flickr.com/photos/abbylanes/3333997277
57. But 20 years in to the ad-supported web, we can see that our current model is bad, broken, and corrosive. It’s time to start paying for privacy, to support services we love, and to abandon those that are free, but sell us—the users and our attention—as the product.
59. The Computer Chronicles - The Internet (1993) http://youtu.be/U_o8gerare0
60. catfishing
63. http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/2393
65. creative commons licensed (BY-ND) flickr photo by h.koppdelaney: http://flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/4229648266
66. Be of the Web Enquire Within