The Conventional View of the Web

Creating a comfortable mental model of the Internet

As a client, when you are connected to the Internet you are linked by telephone to a local host computer. This host computer will be permanently linked to a world-wide network of other host computers which are continually exchanging electronic data with each other. Through this local host you can tap into and make use of the whole Internet network to send data and messages to, or receive data and messages from, any other computer connected to the system.

Physically, this system is simple to understand: the Internet is no more than a network of interconnected computers which can send electronic data to each other. However, this simple model masks the vast complexity which can exist in such a system.

With a computing facility at each node of this network, the system is capable of acting in ways which can go far beyond any previous experience the human race has ever before encountered with information transfer and processing.

Scientists are familiar with this kind of complex situation and deal with the problem by creating an abstraction or metaphor which can model the system in a simple but useful way. This simplified model is then used to facilitate understanding, exploration, testing and prediction. Clearly, such an approach is appropriate for discussions about the Internet.

Computer programmers, skilled in the art of object-oriented programming have an edge in being able to conceptualize the Internet. They are familiar with the bizarre practice of visualizing a three dimensional empty space and populating that space with objects which can communicate with each other. Object-oriented programmers are quite happy about the fact that these objects have shape or form only in their own imaginations.

It is this trick of being able to create pictures and models in the mind which is at the heart of being able to understand what the Internet is all about and being in a position to fully realize and exploit its vast potential.

For a non programmer, a specific tangible metaphor is needed to give substance to the Internet. This metaphor must be stripped of all surplus or irrelevant technical detail, yet, still be able to accurately model all the essential features: allowing thoughts to be concentrated upon the dynamics of the complete system without getting bogged down with unnecessary side issues.

Through clever and creative text and graphics, HTML documents can give the illusion that a Web site is a virtual representation of any physical structure in real life.

Clicking upon pictures rather than text, a Net surfer can be beguiled into believing that he or she is moving around a model of the real world - a world of information and entertainment. Links between Web sites then become bridges and roads, the interlinked virtual structures become a three dimensional city in cyberspace.

As a passive network, where you just move around and click upon things, this vision of the cyberspace city has very little substance and is of limited interest. What brings it to life is the involvement of the Web site computers with the files and documents they are displaying.

They need not be passive data delivery systems, they can be made to play an interactive part in a Web surfer's experience.

Interaction, between Web servers (the name given to the Web site computers) and the users is arranged through another set of protocols called the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). Like the HTML convention, CGI allows one computer to communicate with another, but, whereas HTML allows the server to control the display at the user end, the CGI protocol allows actions at the users end to control programs at the server end.

Another Way of Looking at the Web

As attractive as this conventional view of the Web seems to be, it is looking at the Internet and the World Wide Web from a single limited perspective: from the server side of the Web.

The world of OOPS is capable of reorganizing this comfortable view of the Web into quite different communication systems, the like of which has never before been visualized or created - simply by bringing into play the vast potential of the client side computers and looking at the structure from different paradigms.

This is the world of OOPS, of COISes and Intranets. It is the world of interplay between intelligent agents, CD-ROMs, computers and the Internet. It is the world of info bots, Web site objects and object oriented landscapes. It is a world where the imagination can be given full reign.

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