When the Web Was New

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After starting up a system to browse for Web pages, a user could find and read the text and then retrieve the graphic by clicking on the "link" to it (the link, in the form of a word, phrase, or icon, would be highlighted). The user might wish to correspond about the information with the original team, or might develop additional Web documents -- which could also take the form of color photographs, sound, and animation -- that perhaps could be linked to the original text page by the same highlighting process.

The creation of Mosaic, a program that with colorful, "windows"-style graphics makes browsing easy and enjoyable, has fueled an explosion in Web use and development far beyond that envisioned by the original scientists. The public is starting to use the system to find documents posted by businesses and other organizations describing, say, how to order flower bouquets electronically or apply for admission to a particular university.

Realizing that the Web can be valuable in helping to make sales, many companies are creating online catalogs and advertising to entice thousands of computer-literate (and upscale) customers each day while avoiding the high costs of traditional marketing through print and broadcast media.

With the boom in use, the number of Web servers -- the computers that handle requests for Web documents -- has grown from only 130 in mid-1993 to well over 10,000 today.

But the rapid pace of development is leading to traffic-control and other problems. For example, while requests for materials are usually answered within seconds, popular Web documents -- such as the White House home page, which includes photos of the First Family and a recorded message from President Clinton -- sometimes take minutes to transmit or fail altogether.

In part, the slowness relates to the number of requests individual Web servers can handle at once. Also, the multimedia nature of many Web documents requires enormous amounts of data, making gridlock a bigger problem for Web users than for users of other parts of the fast-growing Internet.

There's also mounting concern that the system needs programs to secure sensitive data, such as customers' credit-card numbers, against interception and decryption by computer intruders. While malicious hacking has not yet become a problem on the Web, developers are acutely aware that no other part of the Internet has been spared the wrath of criminally motivated hackers.

Users also see the value of developing programs that essentially offer a "Yellow Pages" for the flood of information available on the Web, since searching it now for particular documents can be painful or even impossible. But the creation of various programs with different underlying protocols could result in the Web's fragmentation and decay, according to Tim Berners-Lee, who created the Web's original standards while a CERN member.