Vision Webcentric Computation Todays Web a popular computer

Vision: Web-centric Computation Today’s Web: a popular computer application. . . along with desktop publishing, graphics, spreadsheets, databases, CAD, . . . Tomorrow’s Web: a uniform medium for access to services. . . including desktop publishing, graphics, spreadsheets, databases, CAD, . . .

Web-centric PC. . . Steve’s Startup Page • Miscellaneous • My stock portfolio • Munich Trip • Textbook I’m writing • Logic simulations • CURL hacking • Tax Reporting Talks • Photography Books Asia Talk CURL Paper New Powerpoint Feature: Microsoft’s Content Wizard will prepare your entire talk!

Technology barriers Function - Interaction barriers - Skill barriers JAVA C++, Active. X, . . . TCL, Java. Script Evolution involves hill climbing along this curve… HTML Discontinuities discourage it! Sophistication

Alternative: The Gentle Slope. . . Evolutionary path for accessible tools Function CURL (MIT LCS): single language supporting • HTML-like formatted hypertext • Author/programmer semantic continuum • Efficient, native-compiled mobile code • Mobile, extensible type system for metadata Sophistication

Web-centric user view Web Interaction Model replaces • • • Software installation (dynamically imported) “Applications” File system interaction (transparent caches) Local/Remote distinctions Manuals/documentation Windows 95! Config. sys. Install/Uninstall. FAT filesys. Remote mounts. Software updates. Registry. … …. . .

Obstacles & Issues 1. Technical: can a coherent web environment support authors, programmers, developers? 2. Business: do industrial interests promote web-centric evolution? 3. Economic: Can current economic models survive the communication revolution?

Partitioned Community. . . Developers Bill & Jim Programmers Many of US. Authors People who actually have something to say.

Technology Pressures New Communication level: driving forces • Function: assimilation of applications • Automatization of content consumption • Semantic coherence: • consistent language interface over content/scripting/programming communities • “Groupware” cooperative environments Promising approaches: • Metadata? Objects? • Code mobility: security, transparency What will emerge as the Lingua Franca of the web?

Structured, interactive documents. . .

Automatization: Content Extraction Today: Sophisticated Curl user: • Builds get-quote primitive which automates consumption of some particular web content • Might use extract-html, provided by an even more sophisticated user: {define {get-quote name: symbol}: float {extract-html x: float {get-url {append “www. quote. com/qs/SYM=“ name}} {table. . . {row “Last” x. . . } Eventually: server provides typed CURL stock object

An integrated, coherent web. . .

Alternative: The Gentle Slope. . . Evolutionary path for accessible tools Function CURL: a single language supporting • HTML-like formatted hypertext • Author/programmer semantic continuum • Efficient, native-compiled mobile code • Mobile, extensible type system for metadata Sophistication

CURL: A Gentle-Slope Language for the Web Evolutionary path for accessible tools Function Steve Ward & David Kranz MIT Lab for Computer Science • HTML-like formatted hypertext • Author/programmer semantic continuum • Efficient, native-compiled mobile code • Mobile, extensible type system for metadata Sophistication