The Internet, the Web and the Printing Press

For my final blog, I’d like to elaborate on Dan Gillmor’s comment that the communications model of the Internet was an important jump over the traditional communications model.

The Internet developed because of a serious problem our military had as computers started dominating communications in the Cold War era of the 1960s. Pentagon strategists were very concerned that an atomic attack could cripple a communications network with a central command center and also cripple our ability to conduct a response. As a result, they engaged computer experts within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a network that could withstand such an attack.

The result was the development of the Internet, which consisted of multiple communication nodes that would have redundant command centers and automatically route communications around any single node that was taken out in an attack. The Internet was also the model that was used by the International Standards Organization (ISO) in the late 1970s when it developed what has become known the ISO Reference Model or the ISO Layer Model.

Basically, the model splits communications into seven layers: physical, data, network, transport, session, presentation, and application. The most important point is that as you go up the layers, you don’t have to worry about what’s happening at lower levels.

The key levels of the Internet from the military’s viewpoint were the transport and session layers, which determine how information is routed throughout the network. You may have heard them referred to as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Information Protocol). These two layers controlled how information was routed throughout the network, including automatically adjusting if a network node suddenly disappeared.

Connection Between the Internet and the Printing Press

One of the lessons I give to my computer and journalism students is a discussion about the connection between the Web and the printing press. There is a direct and important connection, along with its significance.

The anticipatory set is asking my students to name the most important invention in history. Most of them say things like the computer, the car, the Internet, etc. Very few say the printing press or the wheel, which is also a candidate.

I then tell them by far and away that it’s the printing press because that allowed mass education, which led to the invention of all the stuff that we find so valuable in our loves today.

The next step is asking the students if they think there’s a connection between the printing press and the Web? Most aren’t sure because at this point they expect me to make one and I do.

The most important advancement in printing was computerized typesetting, which allowed a computer to electronically create a plate that could be put on the press, which ended the days of moveable type. In the 1980s, the ISO developed a language called Standardized General Markup Language (SGML), which was a direct descendant of the languages used in computerized typesetting. SGML described how large documents, typically technical documents or government reports, were to be marked up for printing.

Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web.

Tim Berners-Lee, the developer of the Web, used SGML as his model for creating Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML), the language of the Web. Basically, instead of taking SGML’s model of printing to a piece of paper, he created a new model in which information was printed to a personal computer’s screen.

In effect, the Web is really printing to computer screens with one significant innovation, which ties this blog together. The Web is an application that sits at the 7^th layer of the ISO Reference Model.

Why is this important to get across to our students? There are three primary reasons. First, the Web’s power comes not just from its ability to print to screens, including text, photographs, and video, but also from its networking ability that allows hyperlinks between other sites on the Web in an instant. Essentially, it combines the printing press with computer networking.

Second, while Dan Gillmor made a distinction between the push nature of printed newspapers (they’re delivered to you) and the pull nature of the Web (you need to log in to a web site to pull the information), the Internet’s applications layer allows other applications to interact with the Web.

In addition to the Web, the Internet has several other applications, only two of which we typically use these days: email and file transfer protocol (ftp). When you combine the Web and email, for example, you can create opt-in mailing lists that can send you links to updated Web sites, which turns the pull model of the Web into a push model.

The Bottom Line

The Internet, Web, email, etc. are technologies that everyone uses, but we often don’t understand their history or their connection to the printing press, which started the information revolution that is still picking up speed. Is this important for your students to know to add perspective to what they do? I think so.

This leads to the last observation. The Web, email, and ftp are applications that sit atop the Internet. Several other applications were developed before the Web and are now rarely used. What other applications are going to come in our future? The Internet, after all, has only been popular for 20 years. Who knows what will come in the next 20 years? Maybe one of the students whom you turn on through this lesson will be the one who develops the next big thing on the Net.

-- Steve Caswell

    Simi Valley High School

    Simi Valley, CA

P.S. It was a great pleasure meeting all of you and being a part of this amazing institute. While getting home will be great, I'm going to miss you all. But as I said in an earlier blog “Why Will We Miss Everyone So Much?”

"Sure, you can say, 'We'll always have Facebook,' but like Bogey knew deep in his heart, 'Here's looking at you, kid' is a lot better than online."