Why the Web was invented: January 29, 2001 issue of New Thinking

January 29, 2001 New Thinking:
Why the Web was invented

Website content management

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January 29, 2001

Why the Web was invented

By Gerry McGovern

“This is a wonderful organisation. It involves several thousand people, many of them very creative, all working toward common goals…. The actual observed working structure of the organisation is a multiply connected "web" whose interconnections evolve with time.

"In this environment, a new person arriving, or someone taking on a new task, is normally given a few hints as to who would be useful people to talk to. Information about what facilities exist and how to find out about them travels in the corridor gossip and occasional newsletters, and the details about what is required to be done spread in a similar way. All things considered, the result is remarkably successful, despite occasional misunderstandings and duplicated effort.

“A problem, however, is the high turnover of people. When two years is a typical length of stay, information is constantly being lost. The introduction of the new people demands a fair amount of their time and that of others before they have any idea of what goes on. The technical details of past projects are sometimes lost forever, or only recovered after a detective investigation in an emergency. Often, the information has been recorded, it just cannot be found.

“If the things this organization does were a static once-only development, all the information could be written in a big book. As it is, this organization is constantly changing as new ideas are produced, as new technology becomes available, and in order to get around unforeseen technical problems.

"When a change is necessary, it normally affects only a small part of the organisation. A local reason arises for changing something. At this point, one has to dig around to find out what other parts and people will be affected. Keeping a book up to date becomes impractical, and the structure of the book needs to be constantly revised.

“The problems of information loss may be particularly acute at this organization, but in this case (as in certain others), this organization is a model in miniature of the rest of world in a few years time. This organization meets now some problems which the rest of the world will have to face soon.”

Does the above sound like a description of your organization? Whoever wrote it sounds like they’ve isolated a real and growing problem. I wonder what sort of solution they’d propose for solving the problem?

In fact, the quoted text above is a slightly modified extract from, “Information Management: A Proposal” by Tim Berners-Lee, which he presented to CERN in March 1989. The outcome of this proposal was the invention of the World Wide Web.

The problems that CERN faced in 1989 are indeed the problems that the world faces today: getting the right information to the right person at the right time. The Web has given us a wonderful technology to resolve these problems, but on its own the Web is not enough. In fact, much of the Web has become a dumping ground for inferior and out-of-date content. This sort of content is acting like a weed that is choking quality content.

The challenge of quality content will never be solved by technology. The challenge will only grow, until we train people to create better content, people to publish it more quickly, and people to structure it in a way that those who need it can find it fast. Technology can support these processes, but it is quality people who will make quality content work.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: Get ready to pay for content
Previous issue: Fundamentals of quality search, part 2
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Tim Berners Lee invented the Web because CERN -- the organization he worked for -- faced certain problems: getting the right content to the right person at the right time.