The leading person and creating and driving
force in these developments was Douglas Engel-
bart of Stanford Research International – SRI –
in Menlo Park, California. Engelbart developed
and demonstrated a comprehensive set of con-
cepts and techniques of groundbreaking impor-
tance. The most significant was perhaps the
“mouse”, the little thing you hold in your hand.
Everybody who has seen a computer today has
seen it. Equally important is the “hyperlink”.
That is a reference pointer-code that can be
embedded in any information-image – text or
picture – displayed on a computer screen. A
mouse-click on the pointer opens the referred
image. That happens independently of where in
the net that information happens to be located.A quarter of a century would elapse before these
ideas could be seriously employed and put to
extensive use. Only then the technical and eco-
nomic prerequisites were met. Microprocessors
had made low priced personal computers com-
mon as “workstations” and the Internet was
available and ubiquitous (networking work-stations were another of Engelbart’s ideas long
before the microprocessor). And, of special
importance, the ban on commercial traffic in the
Internet was lifted in 1991. Some of the prereq-
uisites were met relatively early. Computer
screens, first demonstrated in the late 1950s,
began to be common from the early 1970s, per-
sonal computers a little later. Computer co-oper-
ation in general, vendor independent networks,
beyond the groups participating in developing
the Internet techniques themselves, became
usual from around 1980. Some of the ideas that
Engelbart demonstrated in 1968 are still (2001)
awaiting comprehensive use, but are expected
to become similarly important. Examples are
telephony and moving pictures.World Wide Web is primarily an example of
technical possibilities that Internet technology
opens up as a carrier of entirely new and exciting
forms of information handling.Electronic Mail
Message transfer was a dominating application
of the Internet already from the start of the
development in 1969. That form of communica-
tion was especially practical and a necessary tool
in the decentralized collaboration of the ten
groups of researchers who undertook the basic
research and development in the 1970s.The original vision of resource sharing network-
ing, an important source of inspiration for the
development, comprised a number of other,
more or less exotic, applications. E-mail was an
overwhelming generator of traffic for many
years. It perhaps still is, at least was so until the
Web started another “landslide” of new users.
To many people either e-mail or Web is still
synonymous with the Internet.E-mail is an important form of communication
already. It has unique properties in comparison
to ordinary mail and telephone. Therefore it
defends a place of its own as a communications
medium. It overcomes both time and distance,
it is fast, but still the addressee may answer pre-
cisely, for record, when convenient after having
had plenty of time to think, unlike the telephone.
E-mail is suitable for automation in various
forms. And it is cheap.However, e-mail is still – in 2001 – far from
having reached its full potential as a general
communication medium. “Old-fashioned” mail
and telephone are far ahead in general availabil-
ity. The most important shortcoming is that e-
mail only reaches those who often use comput-
ers, connected to the Internet – and whenthey
use the computer. To make certain that a mes-
sage gets there, at least to most people, it will
still be best to call or send a letter.Hyperlinks make information
stored elsewhere available by
pointing at a reference to it
and clicking
The concept of workstation
was demonstrated at SRI by
Douglas Engelbart as early
as 1968. It had cathode ray
screen, a “mouse” for the
right hand and a five-finger
key-set for the left hand. The
user could point, click and type
anywhere at the screen while
looking steadily
-----In any picture or text hyperlinks
may be built in. As an example, clicking
the name of a particular personmay
immediately bring in his
picture located in some
computer – anywhere in the
world
Mr. Ola Norman•CV- web-add
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