1. 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,...

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

3. Technology barriers Sophistication Function HTML TCL, JavaScript JAVA C++, ActiveX,... Evolution involves hill climbing along this curve… Discontinuities discourage it! - Interaction barriers - Skill barriers

4. Alternative: The Gentle Slope... Evolutionary path for accessible tools 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 Function

5. 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. … …...

6. 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?

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

8. 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?

9. Structured, interactive documents...

10. Automatization: Content Extraction {define {get-quote name:symbol}:float {extract-html x:float {get-url {append “www.quote.com/qs/SYM=“ name}} {table...} {table... {row “Last” x...}...}...} 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: Eventually : server provides typed CURL stock object

11. An integrated, coherent web...

12. Alternative: The Gentle Slope... Evolutionary path for accessible tools 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 Function

13. CURL: A Gentle-Slope Language for the Web Evolutionary path for accessible tools 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 Function