We've been on the planet Earth thousands upon thousands of years with the ability and need to communicate.  Spoken word eventually became written word, and the genealogy of letters, text, and publishing can show us how the transmission of information has shaped our lives and launched publishing history down its current path.


Using text and images dates back to our primates who painted on caves---hieroglyphs were the standard for ``writing'' for over 3,000 years during the fourth millennium BC, which marked the beginning age of writing \cite[12]{hieroglyphs}. The first systems of picture writing date back to ages ``prior even to the taming of any domestic animal, or the cultivation of cereals; earler, so far as we know, than the construction of any kind of human habitation'' \cite[17]{alphabet}.


We know there are at least five systems of ``picture writing'' that were each formed independently of one another, the Egyptian, the Cuneiform, the Chinese, the Mexican, and the Hittite \cite[14]{alphabet}. Through studying the history of these systems, we have seem the development of alphabets, starting from graphics that represent ideas and concepts called an ``ideogram'':


\begin{quotation}
The history of the cuneiform writing also illustrates with great completeness the successive stages through which writing tends to pass; the primitive ideograms developing themselves, through verbal phonograms, into syllabic signs, until finally the alphabetic stage is reached \cite[40]{alphabet}
\end{quotation}
This paved the way for us to have a standard for communication as a civilization---this event spawned a new conduit for ideas.

From Ideograms to the Alphabet

Before Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the late fifteenth century, books were created during the age of the scribes, where people copied books manually by hand, making it slow and expensive \cite[4]{printing}. The shift from script to print was one of the most important events of our civilization \cite[5]{press}.


Gutenberg's idea was to combine \emph{two existing technologies}, printing and the press. Printing was done using carved wooden blocks, and the press was used to crush grapes to extract juice \cite[4]{printing}. Another advancement was to use pieces of metal instead of carved wooden blocks so they could be continued to be used \cite[4]{printing}.


\begin{interactive}
\img{/app/assets/paper/press.jpg}
\end{interactive}
\begin{print}
\img{images/press.ps}
\end{print}

Gutenberg had spent over 20 years and his life savings into building the printing press \cite[10]{gutenberg}, and never received a penny for his invention. It wasn't until the $16^{th}$ century that he was given credit as the inventor \cite[15]{gutenberg}, however, his impact on the world has not gone unseen since. In 1453, Gutenberg began working on a three volume bible. At that time, one bible would take four years to complete, but with the advent of the printing press, it could be produced 90 times faster. This meant that books were not only for the wealthy, but for everyone, which ultimately began the movement for the democratization of knowledge \cite[5]{printing}. 


``After the advent of printing however, the transmission of written information became much more efficient. It was not only the craftsman outside universities who profited from the new opportunities to teach himself. Of equal importance was the chance extended to bright undergraduates to reach beyond their teachers' grasp'' \cite[66]{press}.


Age of Scribes to the Printing Press

People became literate with the help of the alphabet and the printing press. One was a standard, the other was a process of dissemination. For the case of learning through text, alphabets and languages provide syntax and rules for the ways characters combine to map to ideas in the same way that more advanced systems of picture writing synthesized simple ideograms to facilitate transmission of more complex ideas. 


Although intellectuals in $13^{th}$ century Europe had read Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Cicero, Galen, Hippocrates, it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that was led by Martin Luther, when his translation of the New Testament when written in the vernacular in 1529. Books contained alphabet and syllable tables in the vernacular by the late $16^{th}$ century, with intention of enabling children to learn \cite[41]{literacy}.


The first press was established in the the mid-$17^{th}$ century in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and textbooks were published within the original Colonies. The American textbook today is a product of the later half of the $19^{th}$ century when the school was a profitable market and the transportation infrastructure allowed it \cite[41]{literacy}. The authorship of textbooks became more important over time as school and literacy popularized, and more children and people were learning, which further increased the amount of educated people in the population \cite[9]{literacy}.

Evolution of Text and Literacy

As society's aggregate technological knowledge progressed, developments in science enabled the production of complex systems, which allowed for the advancement of hardware and software in the 1930's through the 1950's. This created a foundation for the formation of the personal computer in the 1960's and 1970's.


\begin{quotation}
The next revolution in the mass production of machines was software. The late 1970s saw the rise of the personal computer, a device capable of behaving as any machine—typewriter, adding machine, filing cabinet, arcade game---when given the right instructions. Manufacturing a ``machine'' was now just a matter of printing its instructions onto a disk, and production costs plummeted \cite[42]{victor}.
\end{quotation}
What started out as a mission to seek a military defense system, founded what is known as computer graphics and the Internet today. Around the same time, the aerospace industry developed the first plotting software and CAD system, and academia created user interfaces to input graphical data into computers. Eventually, technology advanced, and software that at one point was proprietary to engineering firms and the military, became available to anyone with a personal computer.

The Information Age

The design of systems has been greatly influenced by computers. For instance, the development of automated design and drafting came about in the 1950's and 1960's within the military and US Air Force. In the search for new defense systems, an innovative system was created that used a visual display to transmit vital, spatial information regarding a possible enemy threat. Since then the technology has continuously evolved at an accelerated rate, and spawned the fields of Computer Graphics (CG) and Computer-aided Design (CAD). Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) was a well-developed industry which used computers to aid in production of metal parts. CAD was not more than an idea until CAM catalyzed its existence. Although CAD systems had been developed, graphical input data was cumbersome until Ivan Sutherland's sketchpad was developed in academia. These systems were almost all proprietary until AutoDesk brought CAD to the home market and onto the personal computer, streamlining the design process.


Halfway through the $20^{th}$ century, the United States was faced with two major international struggles: in June of 1948 the Berlin Blockade occurred, a major crisis of the Cold War; just two years later, the Korean war broke out in June of 1950. During these times it became imperative for the US to build an efficient military defense \cite[1]{sage}. A new type of defense gave promise on April $20^{th}$, 1951, when a team of electrical engineers from MIT and radar engineers from Air Force's Cambridge Research Laboratories demonstrated how computers could be used to defend the continent from an airborne attack:


\begin{quotation}
For the first time, radar data on an approaching ``enemy'' aircraft had been sent over telephone lines and entered into an electronic digital computer, which had almost instantaneously calculated and posted instructions directing the pilot of a ``defending'' aircraft to his target \cite[1]{sage}.
\end{quotation}

\begin{interactive}
\img{/app/assets/paper/ibm-sage.jpg}
\end{interactive}
\begin{print}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics{images/sage.ps} \\
\addcontentsline{lof}{figure}{The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) computer was used by the US Air Force.} 
The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) computer was used by the US Air Force. \\
(source: http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/IBM-SAGE-computer.gif)
\end{center}
\end{print}

This system was the world's first to use a computer to generate graphics. The US Air Force used this command and control system known as Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) to display radar data and relevant information on an interactive \emph{cathode-ray tube}. Information that traveled over a network between computers was then processed in real-time, enabling Air Force personnel to detect intruding aircraft and respond accordingly \cite[1]{bozdoc}. SAGE was a system that later spawned what became the foundation for the rapidly-growing fields of computer networking and computer graphics.


Computer Graphics and Networks

The Boeing 707 aircraft began flight in 1954, and by 1958 flew commercially in the airline service industry, which then helped Boeing to design its now famous 727 aircraft. This meant that in succeeding years more and more industries would require large amounts of computing power \cite[130]{sanders}. During that time the industry turned from using computers explicitly for design, to using them for numerical calculations and in manufacturing. Then in 1956, the Boeing Aerospace department acquired its first Numerical Computing (NC) machines, which where then used to produce fairly complex aluminum parts. By 1960, for the aerospace industry, these NC machines were ``a part of life'' \cite[131]{sanders}.


At this time, the industrialized world was acquiring large super-computers, even though there was not a way to generate \emph{renderings}. Then an engineer named of Norman Sanders who was at Boeing in 1959 describes how renderings were created: ``All design drawings were made by hand; the definition of every motorcar, aircraft, ship, and mousetrap consisted of lines drawn on paper'' \cite[129]{sanders}. This meant that with every drawing created by hand, even minor changes incurred labor-intensive re-drawing; some changes required that a print be completely re-drawn from scratch. At this time computers were used only as an intermediary doing calculations for an engineer which were then drafted by hand.


Input was entered into computers via punch cards, and then at night would generate output via a printer. This data could then be used by an engineer to create a draft, a procedure that had obvious inefficiencies: ``[t]here were cases of engineers spending three months drawing curves resulting from a single night's computer run'' \cite[130]{sanders}. This cumbersome method compelled Sanders to question whether or not computers could perform the task of drawing continuous lines and curves. But soon, with the help of Art Dietrich, Boeing sold their first software used to generate computer plots with printers. These plots, however, were far from accurate, and the Boeing drafting department refused to use them for design projects. To make matters worse, at this time Boeing would not invest any money in this type of research and development, because it wasn't efficient enough for their own use. In addition, no independent companies would engage in this venture because no market existed for it \cite[132]{sanders}. However, the world of \emph{computer-aided manufacturing} (CAM) came to the rescue. Computers had already been used to operate milling machines that accurately cut metal in three dimensions. After a stroke of insight, in 1961, a Boeing design team replaced the cutter head of these machines with a small diamond scribe, which allowed these machines to plot in two dimensions on aluminum sheets. And ``[p]resto! The computer had drawn the world's first accurate lines by machine'' \cite[132]{sanders}. However, as in any major engineering firm, the accuracy of this system required proof. So, in order to prove the competency of these drawings for the design of the Boeing 727, the project manager required that Norman's team generate 19 renderings of the Boeing 707's wing using this technology:


\begin{quotation}
We trucked the inscribed sheets of aluminum from the factory to the engineering building and for a month or so engineers on their hands and knees examined the lines with microscopes ... The chief engineer stood on his feet and said simply that the design lines that we had developed had been under the microscope for several weeks and were the most accurate lines ever drawn---by anybody, anywhere, at any time ... That is the closest I believe anyone every came to the birth of \emph{Computer-aided Design} \cite[132]{sanders}.
\end{quotation}
The success of this technology bound the Boeing 727 project to the computer not only for the manufacturing process, but for the design process as well: ``We computed the definition of the outer surface of the 727 and stored it inside the computer, making all recourse to the definition via a computer run as opposed to an engineer looking at drawings using a magnifying glass'' \cite[130]{sanders}. To confirm the value of these developments, the Boeing 727 was completed on time and on budget, which ``would not have happened had we not used CAD'' \cite[133]{sanders}.


Computer-Aided Design

Despite these breakthroughs, the industry had still not developed a practical means to input graphics, or any sort of graphical communication system for designing with computers. Then, in 1960, Ivan Sutherland used the TX-2 computer produced at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory to produce a system known as ``Sketchpad'', which is considered to be the first step towards the creation of the CAD industry \cite[1]{bozdoc}.


This system was designed to be a ``man-machine graphical communication system'' that eliminates cumbersome input methods, such as manually typing coordinates and commands \cite[501]{sutherland}. Instead of a complex, typed syntax, an intuitive ``light pen'' allows a user to interact immediately with Sketchpad by touching the pen to a monitor. Ronald Baecker recently wrote an article on human-computer interaction, and discusses the influential role that Sketchpad system had in the 1960's: ``Sketchpad demonstrated the potential for effective computer-aided sketching and design through innovative concepts'' \cite[23]{baecker}. This potential inspired many other pioneering ideas within interactive computer graphics, and provided a working prototype for CAD applications.


\begin{interactive}
\img{/app/assets/paper/sutherland.jpg}

Ivan Sutherland using the TX-2 computer to demonstrate ``Sketchpad''
\end{interactive}
\begin{print}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics{images/sutherland.ps} \\
\addcontentsline{lof}{figure}{Ivan Sutherland using the TX-2 computer to demonstrate ``Sketchpad''.} 
Ivan Sutherland using the TX-2 computer to demonstrate ``Sketchpad''. \\
(source: http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/images/ivan-sutherland.jpg)
\end{center}
\end{print}





Human Computer Interaction

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, was a visionary and Internet pioneer whose contributions to computer science are great---a computer scientist from MIT who worked on SAGE, and later saw the value in connecting various communities together \cite[1]{bisson}, is known for contributing his ideas to the formation of the Internet \cite[1]{pioneers}.


At a time where computers were run using holes in punch cards, ``Lick'', as he asked to be called \cite[5]{lickliderpdf}, had a better idea for how computers should work. In 1960 he wrote ``Man-Computer Symbiosis'', and talked about real-time communication between man and machine, and also modern topics that still remain somewhat unsolved such as speech recognition---he was ahead of his time.


It was in 1962 when J.C.R. was asked to take command of the Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control departments of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) \cite[1]{pioneers}, where his role was to manage a department to fund researchers to build new technology and teams. Lick had at his disposal a funding amount that at that time was greater than any other funded computer science projects \cite[5]{lickliderpdf}. 


Although Lick left ARPA, where he coined the name ``ARPANET'' \cite[1]{pioneers}, it was shortly after he left when ARPANET connected four computers together in 1969 \cite[1]{bisson}. The chief architect of ARPANET, Larry Roberts, years later claimed that Lick was responsible for the ideas of the Internet, even though Lick wasn't present at ARPANET during the time it was implemented: 


\begin{quotation}
The vision was really Lick's originally. None of us can really claim to have seen that before him nor{can} anybody in the world. Lick saw this vision in the early sixties. He didn't have a clue how to build it. He didn't have any idea how to make this happen. But he knew it was important, so he sat down with me and really convinced me that it was important and convinced me into making it happen \cite[1]{pioneers}.
\end{quotation}
It is clear that Lick was an Internet Visionary. Written in 1968, ``The Computer as a Communication Device'' was another influential paper that Lick wrote a paper that envisioned the future of digital communication, in which he envisioned ``[i]n a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face'' \cite[26]{licklider2}. Lick also wrote about shared computer programs and hinted at what today is know as the ``cloud'', and even online communities: ``[b]ut let us be optimistic. What will on-line interactive communities be like?'' \cite[37]{licklider2}.


The Internet

Before the World Wide Web came into existence, the Internet needed a way for computers to speak to one another. This is where Vinton Cerf, known to some as ``the father of the Internet'' \cite[1]{cerf}, brought us {\it Transmission Control Protocol} (TCP) and {\it Internet Protocol} (IP),  the standardized protocols that enables any two computers to communicate.


It was October 29th, 1969 when the first transmission was sent across the ARPANET between Stanford and UCLA \cite[1]{cerf}, and by December that year the first four packet-switching nodes were up and running. The four nodes were located at Stanford Research Institute, UCLA, UCSB, and University of Utah \cite[1]{cerf}.


Robert Kahn came to UCLA to help test the ARPANET, and with Cerf found that the ARPANET needed to handle transmission failures. Kahn specifically ``foresaw the need to link together packet-switched networks with different designs so that any computers could communicate freely, no matter what the communication path'' \cite[1]{cerf}.


Then by 1973, Cerf and Kahn came up with the basis for transmission control protocol (TCP), and in May of 1974, they co-authored a paper ``A Protocol For Packet Network Intercommunication'', describing the protocol, which the basis our our Internet today \cite[1]{cerf}:


\begin{quotation}
In particular, we have described a simple but very powerful and flexible protocol which provides for variation in individual network packet sizes, transmission failures, sequencing, flow control, and the creation and destruction of process-to-process associations. \cite[647]{cerfkahn}.
\end{quotation}
Kahn and Cerf created the protocol on top of the technology that had been created at ARPANET. Their technology provided a platform upon which any computers that ran on different software could communicate. It also provided a mechanism to handle failures, which is extremely important due to instabile nature of computer networks. The point here is that they created a protocol, or on some level, a standard for computers to speak to each other. It is the standard that enabled the World Wide Web possible.


TCP/IP

After TCP/IP provided a standardized protocol for computers to communicate, {\it HyperText Markup Language} (HTML) provided a language to describe documents that can be transported via {\it HyperText Transfer Protocol} (HTTP). The beauty of these documents was that they could link to one another \cite[1]{pioneersberners}.


\begin{quotation}
Neither the ARPANET nor the Internet and its constituent networks were purpose-built for particular applications. This design philosophy has allowed these systems to support a broad array of new techniques and applications including packetized voice, streaming video and, of course, the myriad applications built atop the World Wide Web, under the leadership of Tim Berners-Lee, first at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge \cite[1]{cerf}.
\end{quotation}
Tim Berners-Lee had been contracted to work at CERN, a particle physics lab. There he had created a program that used HyperText ``for his personal use to help him remember connections between various people and projects at the lab'' \cite[1]{pioneersberners}.


A few years later, Tim took two {\it existing} technologies, HyperText and TCP/IP, and combined them to provide a way for people to share documents that can link to one another. He built what we know today as a web browser and a web server, which communicate via HTTP, which is the standard protocol for the Web today. This technology enabled people to share documents that could connect to one other. The first web browser he called ``WorldWideWeb'' \cite[1]{pioneersberners}.


HTTP/HTML

Shortly after the first text-based browsers were in use, in 1992 Marc Andreesen and his co-worker Eric Bina started to build a browser called ``MOSAIC''. This was the first popular web browser, and a major factor was that it could display images inside of a Web page whereas other browsers could only show images as a separate file. \cite[1]{pioneersmarc}. 

\begin{interactive}
\img{/app/assets/paper/mosaic-1993.jpg}
\end{interactive}
\begin{print}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics{images/mosaic.ps} \\
\addcontentsline{lof}{figure}{MOSAIC was the first web browser to embed images inside of documents.} 
MOSAIC was the first web browser to embed images inside of documents. \\
(source: http://www.cedmagic.com/history/mosaic-1993.jpg)
\end{center}
\end{print}


This development led to what became known as ``Netscape'', which became the most widely used Web browser of its time. \cite[1]{pioneersmarc}. Within a matter of months, millions of people around the world began to use the Internet.

Web Browsers

As a civilization, the development of language and alphabets allowed us to communicate. After the printing press, a revolution in mass production of media and books advanced our education system and drove literacy rates up. As our accomplishments in technology expanded, the information age was born, and new digital tools accelerated the fields of design and engineering which impels great scientific fascination in its own right. Computer-aided design allows us to build the homes and communities in which we live. Computer graphics enabled us to have a view into computer processes that represent things in the physical world. HCI has provided us with many tools and perspectives for thinking about how we should interact with computers. We've reached the point in our society where the Web is an integral part of many peoples everyday lives. 


Each of these events required adopting a system, or a definitive and agreed upon standard to enable such advancement. Combinations of ideograms progressed into alphabets, which formed from utilizing repeating characters which helped spawn languages. The printing press was built by combining two existing processes used successfully for other means. The Internet and family of technologies as we know it today is a manifestation of a confluence of standards: TCP/IP provided a language for computers to speak. HTML provided a way for documents to speak to one another, and HTTP provided a way for a browser to communicate with a server. Each of these technologies has played a role in providing us the technological infrastructure of computers and systems as we know it today.


The various parts of history in computer science seem to converge on the presumption that utilizing standards for communication systems does indeed have positive consequences for the people utilizing those systems.

3 The Evolution of Ideas and Text