Understanding New Media
Extending Marshall McLuhan – Second Edition
Series:
Robert K. Logan
Chapter 42. The World Wide Web
Extract
← 328 | 329 →
· 42 ·
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system. The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. Originally aimed at the High Energy Physics community, it has spread to other areas and attracted much interest in user support, resource discovery and collaborative work areas.
—An early description of the Web from the archives of W3.org (“WorldWideWeb—Summary,” n.d.)
“A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve individual encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”
—McLuhan’s (1962) foreshadowing of the Internet and the Web
“Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.”
—McLuhan’s (1964, p. 3) description of mass media, which applies with equal validity to the Web ← 329 | 330 →
Content and extension: The content of the World Wide Web is Web sites, whose content is text, hypertext, and images, as well as search engines such as Google that facilitate navigating the Web. The Web extends...
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