A Short History of EBooks

by Marie Lebert

1990: THE WEB BOOSTS THE INTERNET

= [Overview]

The internet was born in 1974 with the creation of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. It began spreading in 1983. The internet got its first boost with the invention of the web by Tim Berners- Lee at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) in 1989-90, and its second boost with the release of the first browser Mosaic in 1993. The internet could now be used by anyone, and not only by computer literate users. There were 100 million internet users in December 1997, with one million new users per month, and 300 million internet users in December 2000. In summer 2000, the number of non-English-speaking users reached 50%, and went on to increase then. According to Netcraft, the number of websites went from one million (April 1997) to 10 million (February 2000), 20 million (September 2000), 30 million (July 2001), 40 million (April 2003), 50 million (May 2004), 60 million (March 2005), 70 million (August 2005), 80 million (April 2006), 90 million (August 2006) and 100 million (November 2006).

= The internet and the web

When Project Gutenberg began in July 1971, the internet was just a glimmer. The pre-internet was created in the U.S. in 1969, as a network set up by the Pentagon. The internet took off in 1974 with the creation of TCP/IP by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. It expanded as a network linking U.S. governmental agencies, universities and research centers.

After the invention of the web in 1989-90 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), Geneva, Switzerland, and the release of the first browser, Mosaic (the ancestor of Netscape), in November 1993, the internet began spreading, first in the U.S. because of investments made by the government, then in North America, and then worldwide. Because the web was easy to use, linking documents and pages with hyperlinks, the internet could now be used by anyone, and not only by computer literate users. There were 100 million internet users in December 1997, with one million new users per month, and 300 million internet users in December 2000.

Why did the internet spread in North America first? The U.S. and Canada were leading the way in computer science and communication technology, and a connection to the internet – mainly through a phone line - was much cheaper than in most countries. In Europe, avid internet users needed to navigate the web at night - when phone rates by the minute were cheaper - to cut their expenses. In 1998, some users in France, Italy and Germany launched a movement to boycott the internet one day per week, for internet providers and phone companies to set up a special monthly rate. This action paid off, and providers began to offer "internet rates".

Christiane Jadelot, a French engineer at INaLF-Nancy (INaLF: National Institute for the French Language), wrote in July 1998: "I began to really use the internet in 1994, with a browser called Mosaic. I found it a very useful way of improving my knowledge of computers, linguistics, literature… everything. I was finding the best and the worst, but as a discerning user, I had to sort it all out, and make choices. I particularly liked the software for email, file transfers and dial-up connections. At that time I had problems with a program called Paradox and character sets that I couldn't use. I tried my luck and threw out a question in a specialist news group. I got answers from all over the world. Everyone seemed to want to solve my problem!"

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in October 1994 to develop interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) for the web, for example specifications for markup languages (HTML, XML, and others), and to act as a forum for information, commerce, communication and collective understanding.

The "Technorealism" movement started on the web in March 1998. Technorealism was "an attempt to assess the social and political implications of technologies so that we might all have more control over the shape of our future. The heart of the technorealist approach involves a continuous critical examination of how technologies - whether cutting-edge or mundane - might help or hinder us in the struggle to improve the quality of our personal lives, our communities, and our economic, social, and political structures" (excerpt from the website). The document Technorealism Overview was approved by hundreds of people signing their names. It stated that, "regardless of how advanced our computers become, we should never use them as a substitute for our own basic cognitive skills of awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment."

= The internet and other media

In 1998, people were also wondering whether the print media and the internet would be antagonistic or complementary. Would the internet swallow up the print media? Would the internet get the top place in the hearts of people buying books or subscribing to magazines? The internet was about to change books and other media in a sweeping way, like the printing presses in the past. Authors, booksellers, librarians, printers, publishers and translators were watching the storm, or participating in it in heated debates on copyright issues and distribution control.

In some African countries, the internet meant more information. The number of newspapers was very low compared to the population figures. Each copy was read by at least twenty people. In January 1997, during the Symposium on Multimedia Convergence organized by the International Labor Organization (ILO), Wilfred Kiboro, managing director of Nation Printers and Publishers, in Kenya, expressed the idea of a printing system through a satellite internet connection, instead of carrying newspapers every day by truck all over the country. This printing system would mean cheaper distribution costs, and a drop in the price of newspapers.

Did the internet compete with television and reading? In Quebec, 30.7% of the population was connected to the internet in March 1998. A poll showed that 28.8% of internet users were watching television less than before, but only 12.1% were reading less. As stated by the online magazine Multimédium in April 1998, this was "rather encouraging for the department of Culture and Communications which has the double task of furthering the development of information highways… and reading!"

According to a survey for Online MSNBC in February 1998, the internet - as a new medium - was well liked, matching and sometimes surpassing other media. Merrill Brown, editor-in- chief of Online MSNBC, wrote in Internet Wire of February 1998: "The internet news usage behavior pattern is shaping up similar to broadcast television in terms of weekday use, and is used more than cable television, newspapers and magazines during that same period of time. Additionally, on Saturdays, the internet is used more than broadcast television, radio or newspapers, and on a weekly basis has nearly the same hours of use as newspapers." People were spending 2.4 hours per week reading magazines, 3.5 hours surfing the web, 3.6 hours reading newspapers, 4.5 hours listening the radio, 5 hours watching cable TV, and 5.7 hours watching broadcast TV.

Jean-Pierre Cloutier was the editor of "Chroniques de Cybérie", a weekly French-language online report of internet news. When interviewed in fall 1997 by François Lemelin, chief-editor of "L'Album", a magazine from Club Macintosh of Quebec, he expressed his views about the internet as a medium: "I think the medium is going to continue being essential, and then give birth to original, precise, specific services, by which time we will have found an economic model of viability. For information cybermedia like "Chroniques de Cybérie" as well as for info- services, community and online public services, electronic commerce, distance learning, the post-modern policy which is going to change the elected representatives / principals, in fact, everything is coming around. (…) Concerning the relationship with other media, I think we need to look backwards. Contrary to the words of alarmists in previous times, radio didn't kill music or the entertainment industry any more than the cinema did. Television didn't kill radio or cinema. Nor did home videos. When a new medium arrives, it makes some room for itself, the others adjust, there is a transition period, then a 'convergence'. What is different with the internet is the interactive dimension of the medium and its possible impact. We are still thinking about that, we are watching to see what happens.

Also, as a medium, the net allows the emergence of new concepts in the field of communication, and on the human level, too - even for non-connected people. I remember when McLuhan arrived, at the end of the sixties, with his concept of 'global village' basing itself on television and telephone, and he was predicting data exchange between computers. There were people, in Africa, without television and telephone, who read and understood McLuhan. And McLuhan changed things in their vision of the world. The internet has the same effect. It gives rise to some thinking on communication, private life, freedom of expression, the values we are attached to, and those we are ready to get rid of, and it is this effect which makes it such a powerful, important medium."

= "The dream behind the web"

Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1990. Pierre Ruetschi, a journalist for the Swiss daily Tribune de Genève, asked him in December 1997: "Seven years later, are you satisfied with the way the web has evolved?". He answered that, if he was pleased with the richness and diversity of information, the web still lacked the power planned in its original design. He would like "the web to be more interactive, and people to be able to create information together", and not only to be consumers of information. The web was supposed to become a "medium for collaboration, a world of knowledge that we share."

In a short essay posted on his webpage, Tim Berners-Lee 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 online, 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)