Article
Our place in information space
To call this "web surfing" always seemed a little... off. An early description of the browsing process, "surfing the web" was probably conceived by adapting the old television tradition of channel surfing. But using the web is much more active than that. We use the TV to mindlessly sift through a linear series of channels; on the web we follow links that pique our interest. While browsing (a library metaphor better suited to infoseeking on the web), we form progressive paths that either take us closer to some end result (the information we are looking for) or simply let us delve more deeply into a topic.
This idea of paths has been with the web since its earliest imaginings. In his 1945 piece (penned just before the atomic bomb he helped to create was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan), Vannevar Bush outlines details for a new information system called the memex. While its basic features are that of a more efficient library, Bush considered the "essential feature of the memex" to be its ability to link items together on the fly, storing your path as you move through information space.
When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined.
Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever...
Today we have the web, which bears shocking resemblance to the memex in its use as a comprehensive and efficient library of information. But we never got the paths -- each click, each link, each move from one page to another is lost as soon as your memory fails or your browser history forgets.
Tabbed browsers (basically every browser but Internet Explorer) may not track our paths like Bush predicted, but they do allow us a way of hanging on to our web memories a bit longer. With tabs, we can click links along the way, then come back to them when we've finished reading. We can mark waypoints in our infopath in a much more practical, hands-on and visual way than bookmarks (the old way) allow. And in a day when browsers never crash, we will live in a constant state of information involvement and re-discovery.
Tom Coates recently "cleaned out" his browser for the first time since returning from a conference, and it was an archaeological experience for him:
One browser window is full tabs stuffed with ubicomp and networked objects sites, another is full of robot-related material. As I grab the URLs and stuff them in a folder for later, I start to realise how clearly I remember navigating to each of the sites and how I'd determined to keep them for later.
The act of "saving" and the act of "having open" are gradually merging and I can foresee a time when I haven't closed my browser in months rather than weeks and in which I've managed to accumulate thousands of open windows across a whole range of applications.
The tabbed browser is gradually transforming the process of web browsing. No longer stuck with "transitory and fleeting relationships to sites," we now have the option of forming long-term, intimate relationships with the sites we visit and the information we consume.
Browser developers continue to push this. The first tabbed browser (which, near as I can tell, was called NetCaptor) came out 5 years ago, and last week, the Omni Group introduced the ability to save browser workspaces. Instead of losing your collection of open tabs and windows when quitting, OmniWeb lets you save. Upon relaunch, you're back where you left off -- transported to the environment of data, links and pages you had worked to build.
As browser features continue to change our relationship with data, what will the future of the web look like? Coates asks:
Will we start wanting to transfer documents in their open states between computers when we upgrade? Will we expect a computer desktop to be as persistent and never-changing as a wooden one? When someone famous dies, will the biographer go through their enormous accumulated browser cache to find out what they were interested in five or ten years ago?