Mark Schueler, Wendy Hall
Updated June, 2019
Usage Phases
From its earliest days, the Web supported read/write functionality. The first browser, WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the Web abstract information space), allowed editing of local files. An early version of Mosaic, the browser credited with popularizing the Web, included an annotation feature. Editing features were little used and were subsequently removed from successive browsers. Thus, for its first five years, the Web was primarily used as an idea space for one-direction publication. It was predominantly a Read/only Web.
With the release of Java, JavaScript, and other browser-centric languages and tools in the mid-1990s, broad bidirectional communication became facile and pervasive, helping to launch a multitude of Web applications and fostering the dot-com boom. This was the beginning of the Read/write Web.
“The reach and ubiquity of the Web makes it the ideal medium for communication, collaboration, business, social exchanges, and fun and entertainment. However, in the past five years, the Web has gone through another significant transformation. It has evolved from a transactional, read-only Web to a participatory, read-write Web” (Sikander and Sarma, 2010: 8).
According to Sikander, the time frame in this claim is based on the advent of Web 2.0 (2010). But earlier technological extensions of the Web’s functionality allowed user interaction with Web sites, fostering multiple participatory models and uses. I would argue that these extensions and their effects in Web space and resulting practice were well underway by the late 1990s—both Java and JavaScript were released in 1995 and were in broad use by 1997.
Still later, with the introduction of weblogs, wikis, social tagging, media sharing, social networking, and similar Web applications that offered capabilities for user-generation of content, as well as creating and advancing online social relationships, the Social Web was born. Note that the Social Web phase is shown above as a component of the Read/write Web—a reflection on the evolution and growing sophistication of Web applications and their uses.
Although the chart above appears to delineate fixed times for the beginnings and endings of these usage phases, these are approximations due to the difficulty of fixing dates on complex sociotechnical developments. Note also that the gap between the start of the Social Web phase and the definition of Web 2.0 indicates a period during which nascent social applications were starting up and proliferating ahead of their categorical recognition.
From its earliest days, the Web supported read/write functionality. The first browser, WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the Web abstract information space), allowed editing of local files. An early version of Mosaic, the browser credited with popularizing the Web, included an annotation feature. Editing features were little used and were subsequently removed from successive browsers. Thus, for its first five years, the Web was primarily used as an idea space for one-direction publication. It was predominantly a Read/only Web.
With the release of Java, JavaScript, and other browser-centric languages and tools in the mid-1990s, broad bidirectional communication became facile and pervasive, helping to launch a multitude of Web applications and fostering the dot-com boom. This was the beginning of the Read/write Web.
“The reach and ubiquity of the Web makes it the ideal medium for communication, collaboration, business, social exchanges, and fun and entertainment. However, in the past five years, the Web has gone through another significant transformation. It has evolved from a transactional, read-only Web to a participatory, read-write Web” (Sikander and Sarma, 2010: 8).
According to Sikander, the time frame in this claim is based on the advent of Web 2.0 (2010). But earlier technological extensions of the Web’s functionality allowed user interaction with Web sites, fostering multiple participatory models and uses. I would argue that these extensions and their effects in Web space and resulting practice were well underway by the late 1990s—both Java and JavaScript were released in 1995 and were in broad use by 1997.
Still later, with the introduction of weblogs, wikis, social tagging, media sharing, social networking, and similar Web applications that offered capabilities for user-generation of content, as well as creating and advancing online social relationships, the Social Web was born. Note that the Social Web phase is shown above as a component of the Read/write Web—a reflection on the evolution and growing sophistication of Web applications and their uses.
Although the chart above appears to delineate fixed times for the beginnings and endings of these usage phases, these are approximations due to the difficulty of fixing dates on complex sociotechnical developments. Note also that the gap between the start of the Social Web phase and the definition of Web 2.0 indicates a period during which nascent social applications were starting up and proliferating ahead of their categorical recognition.
Adapted from my doctoral thesis, Hang On A Minute: A Bourdieusian Perspective On Enterprise 2.0, University of Southampton, 2013.
Sources
Sikander, Javed, 2010. Question on claim in ‘A Prescriptive Architecture for Electronic Commerce and Digital Marketing’. [email] (Personal communication, 15 September 2010).
Sikander, Javed and Sarma, Vinod, 2010. A Prescriptive Architecture for Electronic Commerce and Digital Marketing. Microsoft white paper. March 2010. Version 2.0.
Sikander, Javed and Sarma, Vinod, 2010. A Prescriptive Architecture for Electronic Commerce and Digital Marketing. Microsoft white paper. March 2010. Version 2.0.
Questions? Comments? MarkSchuelerPhD at gmail dot com.