Page 99 - Electronic Commerce

Chapter 2

computer at Yahoo! that stores Web page files. The Web server computer at Yahoo! then
responds by sending a set of files (one for the Web page and one for each graphic object,
74 sound, or video clip included on the page) back to the client computer. These files are
sent within a message that is HTTP formatted.
To initiate a Web page request using a Web browser, the user types the name of the
protocol, followed by the characters “//:” before the domain name. Thus, a user would
type http://www.yahoo.com to go to the Yahoo! Web site. Most Web browsers today
automatically insert the http:// if the user does not include it. The combination of the
protocol name and the domain name is called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
because it lets the user locate a resource (the Web page) on another computer (the Web
server).

EMERGENCE O F T HE WORLD W IDE W EB
At a technological level, the Web is nothing more than software that runs on computers
that are connected to the Internet. The network traffic generated by Web software is the
largest single category of traffic on the Internet today, outpacing e-mail, file transfers, and
other data-transmission traffic. But the ideas behind the Web developed from innovative
ways of thinking about and organizing information storage and retrieval. These ideas go
back many years. Two important ideas that became key technological elements of the
Web are hypertext and graphical user interfaces.

The Development of Hypertext
In 1945, Vannevar Bush, who was director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and
Development, wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly about ways that scientists could
apply the skills they developed during World War II to peacetime activities. The article
included a number of visionary ideas about future uses of technology to organize and
facilitate efficient access to information. Bush speculated that engineers would eventually
build a machine that he called the Memex, a memory extension device that would store
all of a person’s books, records, letters, and research results on microfilm. Bush’s Memex
would include mechanical aids, such as microfilm readers and indexes, that would help
users quickly and flexibly consult their collected knowledge.
In the 1960s, Ted Nelson described a similar system in which text on one page links
to text on other pages. Nelson called his page-linking system hypertext. Douglas Engelbart,
who also invented the computer mouse, created the first experimental hypertext system
on one of the large computers of the 1960s. In 1987, Nelson published Literary Machines,
a book in which he outlined project Xanadu, a global system for online hypertext
publishing and commerce. Nelson used the term hypertext to describe a page-linking
system that would interconnect related pages of information, regardless of where in the
world they were stored.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee was trying to improve the laboratory research document-
handling procedures for his employer, CERN: European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
CERN had been connected to the Internet for two years, but its scientists wanted to find
better ways to circulate their scientific papers and data among the high-energy physics

Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.