Week One

Could people without technical expertise be isolated from the progress of the Digital Age, or could great technologies become disregarded as their efficacy is never understood by communities? It is in my opinion that civilizations should never be in a position of choice between the two formidable contentions. Technology is only a tool that enables individuals pursue their passions and livelihood with relative ease and smoothness. The creators of these tools often fail to see that not all share their credentials in understanding the purpose of their inventions. The field of Human Computer Interactions strives to ensure that neither the creators, nor the users need bridge the gap between the two worlds. Interaction Designers are responsible for it.

Through this course, I aim to garner the tools necessary to enhance the experience of a user in the World Wide Web. End-users must be abstracted from the nitty-gritty of programming. Programmers often fail to understand the nuances of web design that could improve the comfort-level a user needs in order to acquire information. Interaction Designers connect the goals of content providers and developers. They play the roles of a programmer, an artist and a manager.

I traversed through a brief history of the World Wide Web this week, and have noted many interesting facts on its evolution, based on some articles. I have summarized them below:

As We May Think

This visionary article by Dr.Vannevar Bush speaks on the impact of tools that could improve collaboration among scientists. The futuristic machine that he speaks of (Memex) sees its naissance in the era of electronic communications and storage we live in today.

Berners-Lee’s Original Proposal

Another inventive proposal, revolutionizing the idea and purpose of Internet, moving it from an isolated link of computers to an evolving network of information systems. He envisioned the usefulness of such a system that later became the World Wide Web.

How It All Started

A chronological representation of how the Internet was shaped from 1945 until 1995.

What is Web 2.0?

My personal favorite of the articles covered, “Web 2.0”, presents an overview of, well, Web 2.0 and its foster children, Google, Yahoo! etc. It compares and contrasts today’s version of WWW to the short-lived Web 1.0 of the “Netscape’ era. The survivors of Web 1.0 are the giants who have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence. This article often suggests that the style in which web-content is connected is similar to the association formed by synapses in the brain. This is the natural flow of information and intelligence. It justifies why Web 2.0 is more than just a meme and describes the phenomena that Google, Overture and other such web-based, service-oriented applications have demonstrated. Software is delivered to the user as a service and not as product. The rise of proprietary databases could result in the free database movement within the next decade. This article also discusses the business models of such services and concludes that we're entering an unprecedented period of user interface innovation, as web developers are finally able to build web applications as rich as local PC-based applications.

AJAX

I’m looking forward to using AJAX in my projects. Ajax isn’t something you can download. It’s an approach — a way of thinking about the architecture of web applications using certain technologies. A summary of AJAX is as follows: AJAX is short for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and it represents a fundamental shift in what’s possible on the Web. Ajax incorporates:

• standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
• dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
• data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
• asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
• and JavaScript binding everything together.