= [Overview]
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web in 1989-90, wrote in May
1998: "The dream behind the web is of a common information
space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its
universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can
point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft
or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too,
dependent on the web being so generally used that it became a
realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the
ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that
once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then
use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are
doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work
together" (excerpt from: "The World Wide Web: A Very Short
Personal History", available on the W3C website). Twenty years
after the invention of the web, and ten years after the writing
of this text, Tim Berners-Lee's dream and "second part of the
dream" have begun to become reality with many participative
projects across borders and languages.
= From etexts to ebooks
Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971. He wrote in
1998: "We consider etext to be a new medium, with no real
relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material,
but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each
find their own comfortable way to etexts, especially in
schools."
John Mark Ockerbloom created the Online Books Page in 1993. He
wrote in 1998: "I've gotten very interested in the great
potential the net has for making literature available to a wide
audience. (...) I am very excited about the potential of the
internet as a mass communication medium in the coming years.
I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making
books available to a wide audience for free via the net,
whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career,
or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer."
Ten years later, Peter Schweitzer, inventor of the @folio
project, the prototype of a reading device, wrote in an email
interview: "The luck we all have is to live here and now this
fantastic change. When I was born in 1963, computers didn't
have much memory. Today, my music player could hold billions of
pages, a true local library. Tomorrow, by the combined effect
of the Moore Law and the ubiquity of networks, we will have
instant access to works and knowledge. We won't be much
interested any more on which device to store information. We
will be interested in handy functions and beautiful objects."
Marc Autret, a journalist and graphic designer, wrote around
the same time: "I am convinced that the ebook (or "e-book") has
a great future in all non-fiction sectors. I refer to the ebook
as a software and not as a dedicated physical medium (the
conjecture is more uncertain on this point). The [European]
publishers of guides, encyclopedias and informative books in
general still see the ebook as a very minor variation of the
printed book, probably because the business model and secure
management don't seem entirely stabilized. But this is a matter
of time. Non-commercial ebooks are already emerging everywhere
while opening the way to new developments. To my eyes, there
are at least two emerging trends: (a) an increasingly
attractive and functional interface for reading/consultation
(navigation, research, restructuring on the fly, user
annotations, interactive quiz); (b) a multimedia integration
(video, sound, animated graphics, database) now strongly
coupled to the web. No physical book offers such features. So I
imagine the ebook of the future as a kind of wiki crystallized
and packaged in a format. How valuable will it be? Its value
will be the one of a book: the unity and quality of editorial
work!"
= Cyberspace and information society
Over the years, I asked people I was interviewing by email how
they would define cyberspace and information society. Here are
a few answers, to open new perspectives that will happily
replace a "conclusion" for this book.
According to Peter Raggett, head of the Central Library at the
OECD (Organization for Economic and Cooperation Development):
"Cyberspace is that area 'out there' which is on the other end
of my PC when I connect to the internet. Any ISP (Internet
Service Provider) or webpage provider is in cyberspace as far
as his users or customers are concerned." And the information
society? "The information society is the society where the most
valued product is information. Up to the 20th century,
manufactured goods were the most valued products. They have
been replaced by information. In fact, people are now talking
of the knowledge society where the most valuable economic
product is the knowledge inside our heads."
Steven Krauwer is the coordinator of ELSNET (European Network
of Excellence in Human Language Technologies). "For me the
cyberspace is the part of the universe (including people,
machines and information) that I can reach from behind my
desk." And the information society? "An information society is
a society: (a) where most of the knowledge and information is
no longer stored in people's brains or books but on electronic
media; (b) where the information repositories are distributed,
interconnected via an information infrastructure, and
accessible from anywhere; (c) where social processes have
become so dependent on this information and the information
infrastructure that citizens who are not connected to this
information system cannot fully participate in the functioning
of the society."
Guy Antoine is the founder of Windows on Haiti, a reference
website about Haitian culture. For him, cyberspace is
"literally the newest frontier for mankind, a place where
everyone can claim his place, and do so with relative ease and
a minimum of financial resources, before heavy
intergovernmental regulations and taxation finally set in. But
then, there will be another."
Henk Slettenhaar is a professor in communication technologies
at Webster University in Geneva, Switzerland. For him,
cyberspace is "our virtual space. The area of digital
information (bits, not atoms). It is a limited space when you
think of the spectrum. It has to be administered well so
all the earth's people can use it and benefit from it
(eliminate the digital divide)." And the information society is
"the people who already use cyberspace in their daily lives to
such an extent that it is hard to imagine living without it
(the other side of the divide)."
Tim McKenna is an author who thinks and writes about the
complexity of truth in a world of flux. "Cyberspace to me is
the distance that is bridged when individuals use technology to
connect, either by sharing information or chatting. To say that
one exists in cyberspace is really to say that he has
eliminated distance as a barrier to connecting with people and
ideas." And the information society? "The information society
to me is the tangible form of Jung's collective consciousness.
Most of the information resides in the subconsciousness but
browsing technology has made the information more retrievable
which in turn allows us greater self-knowledge both as
individuals and as human beings."