Part 2
An extension of (local) popularization is the export of information technology around the world. Popularization has now occurred on a global scale and English is no longer necessarily the lingua franca of the user. Perhaps there is no true lingua franca, but only the individual languages of the users. One thing is certain -- it is no longer necessary to understand English to use a computer, nor it is necessary to have a degree in computer science. A pull from non- English-speaking computer users and a push from technology companies competing for global markets has made localization a fast growing area in software and hardware development. This development has not been as fast as it could have been. The first step was for ASCII to become extended ASCII. This meant that computers could begin to start recognizing the accents and symbols used in variants of the English alphabet -- mostly used by European languages. But only one language could be displayed on a page at a time. (...)
The most recent development [in 1998] is Unicode. Although still evolving and only just being incorporated into the latest software, this new coding system translates each character into 16 bits. Whereas 8-bit extended ASCII could only handle a maximum of 256 characters, Unicode can handle over 65,000 unique characters and therefore potentially accommodate all of the world's writing systems on the computer. So now the tools are more or less in place. They are still not perfect, but at last we can surf the web in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and numerous other languages that don't use the Western alphabet. As the internet spreads to parts of the world where English is rarely used -- such as China, for example, it is natural that Chinese, and not English, will be the preferred choice for interacting with it. For the majority of the users in China, their mother tongue will be the only choice."
First published in January 1991, Unicode "provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language" (excerpt from the website). This double-byte platform-independent encoding provides a basis for the processing, storage and interchange of text data in any language. Unicode is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, with its variants UTF- 8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 (UTF: Unicode Transformation Format), and is a component of the specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Unicode has replaced ASCII for text files on Windows platforms since 1998. Unicode surpassed ASCII on the internet in December 2007.
1992 > HOMES FOR ELECTRONIC TEXTS
[Summary] The first homes for electronic texts were the Etext Archives, founded in 1992 by Paul Southworth, and the E-Zine-List, founded in 1993 by John Labovitz, among others. The first electronic texts were mostly political. They were followed by electronic zines also covering cultural topics, and not targeted towards a mass audience, at least during the first years. The Etext Archives, hosted on the website of the University of Michigan, were "home to electronic texts of all kinds, from the sacred to the profane, and from the political to the personal", without judging their content. The E-Zine-List was a directory of e-zines around the world, accessible via FTP, gopher, email, the web and other services. The list was updated monthly. 3,045 zines were listed in November 1998. John wrote on its website: "Now the e-zine world is different. (...) Even the term 'e-zine' has been co-opted by the commercial world, and has come to mean nearly any type of publication distributed electronically. Yet there is still the original, independent fringe, who continue to publish from their heart, or push the boundaries of what we call a 'zine'."
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The first homes for electronic texts were the Etext Archives, founded in 1992 by Paul Southworth, and the E-Zine-List, founded in 1993 by John Labovitz, among others.
The first electronic texts were mostly political. They were followed by electronic zines, that also covered cultural topics.
What exactly is a zine? John Labovitz explained on its website: "For those of you not acquainted with the zine world, 'zine' is short for either 'fanzine' or 'magazine', depending on your point of view. Zines are generally produced by one person or a small group of people, done often for fun or personal reasons, and tend to be irreverent, bizarre, and/or esoteric. Zines are not 'mainstream' publications -- they generally do not contain advertisements (except, sometimes, advertisements for other zines), are not targeted towards a mass audience, and are generally not produced to make a profit. An 'e-zine' is a zine that is distributed partially or solely on electronic networks like the internet."
# The Etext Archives
The Etext Archives were founded in 1992 by Paul Southworth, and hosted on the website of the University of Michigan. They were "home to electronic texts of all kinds, from the sacred to the profane, and from the political to the personal", without judging their content.
There were six sections in 1998: (a) "E-zines": electronic periodicals from the professional to the personal; (b) "Politics": political zines, essays, and home pages of political groups; (c) "Fiction": publications of amateur authors; (d) "Religion": mainstream and off-beat religious texts; (e) "Poetry": an eclectic mix of mostly amateur poetry; and (f) "Quartz": the archive formerly hosted at quartz.rutgers.edu.
As recalled on the website the same year: "The web was just a glimmer [in 1992], gopher was the new hot technology, and FTP was still the standard information retrieval protocol for the vast majority of users. The origin of the project has caused numerous people to associate it with the University of Michigan, although in fact there has never been an official relationship and the project is supported entirely by volunteer labor and contributions. The equipment is wholly owned by the project maintainers. The project was started in response to the lack of organized archiving of political documents, periodicals and discussions disseminated via Usenet on newsgroups such as alt.activism, misc.activism.progressive, and alt.society.anarchy. The alt.politics.radical-left group came later and was also a substantial source of both materials and regular contributors. Not long thereafter, electronic zines (e-zines) began their rapid proliferation on the internet, and it was clear that these materials suffered from the same lack of coordinated collection and preservation, not to mention the fact that the lines between e-zines (which at the time were mostly related to hacking, phreaking, and internet anarchism) and political materials on the internet were fuzzy enough that most e-zines fit the original mission of The Etext Archives. One thing led to another, and e-zines of all kinds -- many on various cultural topics unrelated to politics -- invaded the archives in significant volume."
# The E-Zine-List
The E-Zine-List was founded by John Labovitz in summer 1993 as a directory of e-zines around the world, accessible via FTP, gopher, email, the web, and other services. The list was updated monthly.
How did the E-Zine-List begin? On the website, John explained he originally wanted to publicize the print zine Crash by making an electronic version of it. Looking for directories, he only found the discussion group alt.zines and archives like The Well and The Etext Archives. Then came the idea of an organized directory. He began with twelve tiles listed manually in a word processor. Then he wrote his own database.
3,045 zines were listed in November 1998. John wrote on the website: "Now the e-zine world is different. The number of e-zines has increased a hundredfold, crawling out of the FTP and gopher woodworks to declaring themselves worthy of their own domain name, even asking for financial support through advertising. Even the term 'e-zine' has been co-opted by the commercial world, and has come to mean nearly any type of publication distributed electronically. Yet there is still the original, independent fringe, who continue to publish from their heart, or push the boundaries of what we call a 'zine'."
After maintaining the list during years, John passed the torch to others.
1993 > THE ONLINE BOOKS PAGE
[Summary] Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom when he was a student at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the Online Books Page is "a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet." John Mark Ockerbloom first maintained this page on the website of the School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University. In 1999, he moved it at the University of Pennsylvania Library, after being hired as a digital library planner and researcher. The Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003 (including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in 2006, 30,000 books in 2008 (including 7,000 books from Project Gutenberg) and 35,000 books in 2010.
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In 1993, John Mark Ockerbloom created The Online Books Page as "a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet."
The web was still in its infancy, with Mosaic as its first browser. John Mark Ockerbloom was a graduate student at the School of Computer Science (CS) of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
Five years later, in September 1998, John Mark wrote: "I was the original webmaster here at CMU CS, and started our local web in 1993. The local web included pages pointing to various locally developed resources, and originally The Online Books Page was just one of these pages, containing pointers to some books put online by some of the people in our department. (Robert Stockton had made web versions of some of Project Gutenberg's texts.) After a while, people started asking about books at other sites, and I noticed that a number of sites (not just Gutenberg, but also Wiretap and some other places) had books online, and that it would be useful to have some listing of all of them, so that you could go to one place to download or view books from all over the net. So that's how my index got started.
I eventually gave up the webmaster job in 1996, but kept The Online Books Page, since by then I'd gotten very interested in the great potential the net had for making literature available to a wide audience. At this point there are so many books going online that I have a hard time keeping up. But I hope to keep up my online books works in some form or another. I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a mass communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer."
In 1998, there was an index of 7,000 books that could be browsed by author, title or subject. There were also pointers to significant directories and archives of online texts, and to special exhibits.
As stated on the website at the time: "Along with books, The Online Books Page is also now listing major archives of serials (such as magazines, published journals, and newspapers) (...). Serials can be at least as important as books in library research. Serials are often the first places that new research and scholarship appear. They are sources for firsthand accounts of contemporary events and commentary. They are also often the first (and sometimes the only) place that quality literature appears. (For those who might still quibble about serials being listed on a 'books page', back issues of serials are often bound and reissued as hardbound 'books'.)"
In 1999, after graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a Ph.D. in computer science, John Mark was hired as a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Library. He also moved The Online Books Page there, kept it as clear and simple, and went on expanding it.
The Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003 (including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in 2006, 30,000 books in 2008 (including 7,000 books from Project Gutenberg) and 35,000 books in 2010. The books "have been authored, placed online, and hosted by a wide variety of individuals and groups throughout the world". The FAQ listed copyright information about most countries in the world, with links to further reading.
1993 > PDF, FROM PAST TO PRESENT
[Summary] From California, Adobe launched PDF (Portable Document Format) in June 1993, along with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDFs) and Adobe Acrobat (for a fee, to create PDFs). As stated on the website, PDF "lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the world." As the "veteran" format, PDF was perfected over the years as a global standard for distribution and viewing of information. Acrobat Reader was available in several languages, for various platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, etc.), and for various devices (computer, PDA, smartphone). In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader, starting with version 6, which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books.
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From California, Adobe launched PDF (Portable Document Format) in June 1993, along with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDFs) and Adobe Acrobat (for a fee, to make PDFs).
As stated on the website, PDF "lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the world. Individuals, businesses, and government agencies everywhere trust and rely on Adobe PDF to communicate their ideas and vision."
As the "veteran" format, PDF was perfected over the years as a global standard for distribution and viewing of information. Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat gave the tools to create and view PDF files in several languages and for several platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).
In August 2000, Adobe bought Glassbook, a software company intended for publishers, booksellers, distributors and libraries. Adobe also partnered with Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com to offer ebooks for Acrobat Reader and Glassbook Reader.
# Two new software
In January 2001, Adobe launched Acrobat eBook Reader (free) and the Adobe Content Server (for a fee).
Acrobat eBook Reader was meant to read PDF files of copyrighted books, while adding notes and bookmarks, visualizing the book covers in a personal library, and browsing a dictionary.
The Adobe Content Server was intended for publishers and distributors, for the packaging, protection, distribution and sale of PDF copyrighted books, while managing their access with DRM according to the copyright holder's instructions, for example allowing or not the printing and loan of a book. The Adobe Content Server was replaced with the Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server in November 2004.
In April 2001, Adobe partnered with Amazon, for Amazon's eBookStore to include 2,000 copyrighted books for Acrobat eBook Reader. These were titles of major publishers, travel guides and children books.
Acrobat Reader was then available for PDAs, beginning with the Palm Pilot in May 2001 and the Pocket PC in December 2001.
# Adobe Reader
From 1993 to 2003, according to Adobe's website, over 500 million copies of Acrobat Reader were downloaded worldwide. In 2003, Acrobat Reader was available in many languages and for many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, etc.). Approximately 10% of the documents on the internet were available in PDF. PDF was also the main format for ebooks.
In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader, starting with version 6, which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books.
In late 2003, Adobe opened its own online bookstore, the Digital Media Store, with PDF titles from major publishers, for example HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster, and electronic versions of newspapers and magazines, for example The New York Times or Popular Science. Adobe also launched Adobe eBooks Central as a service to read, publish, sell and lend ebooks, and Adobe eBook Library as a prototype digital library.
After being a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard in July 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO 32000-1:2008.
1994 > THE INTERNET AS A MARKETING TOOL
[Summary] Some publishers decided to use the web as a marketing tool to promote their books among the 50,000 new books published per year in the U.S. NAP (National Academy Press) was the first publisher in 1994 to post the full text of some books on its website, for free, with the authors' consent. It was followed by MIT Press (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1995. Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales. On the contrary, sales increased. These initiatives were praised by a number of other publishers, who were reluctant to do the same, for three reasons: the cost of posting thousands of pages online, problems linked to copyright, and what they saw as a "competition" between digital versions for free and print versions for a fee.
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Some publishers decided to post the full text of some books for free on their websites, and to use the web as a marketing tool to sell the print versions.
NAP (National Academy Press) was the first publisher in 1994 to post the full text of some books, with the authors' consent, as a way to promote their books among the 50,000 new books published per year in the U.S. NAP was followed by the MIT Press (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1995.
NAP was created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish its own reports and the ones of the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. In 1994, NAP was publishing 200 new books a year in science, engineering and health. The publisher began posting full books for free, as suggested by their authors themselves, for people to browse them on the website before buying their print versions. Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales. On the contrary, sales increased. Print books ordered online were 20% cheaper. There were also more sales by phone. In 1998, the NAP Reading Room offered 1,000 entire books, available online for free in "image" format, HTML and PDF.
In 1995, MIT Press was publishing 200 new books per year and 40 journals, in science and technology, architecture, social theory, economics, cognitive science, and computational science. MIT Press also decided to put a number of books online for free, as "a long-term commitment to the efficient and creative use of new technologies". Sales of print books with a free online version increased as well.
These initiatives were praised by a number of other publishers, who were reluctant to do the same, for three reasons: the cost of posting thousands of pages online, problems linked to copyright, and what they saw as a "competition" between digital versions for free and print versions for a fee.
1995 > THE PRINT PRESS WENT ONLINE
[Summary] The print press going online in the 1990s led the way to print books going online a few years later, thus the need for this chapter. The first electronic versions of print newspapers were available in the early 1990s through commercial services like America Online and CompuServe. In 1995, major newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal began offering websites with a partial or full version of their latest issue, as well as online archives. In the United Kingdom, the daily Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized edition. The weekly publication The Economist went online too, as well as the daily Le Monde and Liberation in France, the daily El Pais in Spain, and the weekly Focus and Der Spiegel in Germany.
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The print press going online in the 1990s led the way to print books going online a few years later, thus the need for this chapter.
The first electronic versions of print newspapers were available in the early 1990s through commercial services like America Online and CompuServe.
In 1995, newspapers began offering websites with a partial or full version of their latest issue, available freely or through subscription (free or paid), as well as online archives.
For example, The New York Times site could be accessed free of charge, with articles of the print daily, breaking news updated every ten minutes, and original reporting only available online. The site of The Washington Post gave the daily news online, with a full database of articles, with images, sound and videos. The site of The Wall Street Journal was available with a paid subscription, with 100,000 subscribers in 1998.
In the United Kingdom, the daily Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized edition. The weekly publication The Economist went online too, as well as the daily Le Monde and Liberation in France, the daily El Pais in Spain, and the weekly Focus and Der Spiegel in Germany.
"More than 3,600 newspapers now publish on the internet", Eric K. Meyer stated in an essay published in late 1997 on the website of AJR/NewsLink. "A full 43% of all online newspapers now are based outside the United States. A year ago, only 29% of online newspapers were located abroad. Rapid growth, primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Brazil and Germany, has pushed the total number of non-U.S. online newspapers to 1,563. The number of U.S. newspapers online also has grown markedly, from 745 a year ago to 1,290 six months ago to 2,059 today. Outside the United States, the United Kingdom, with 294 online newspapers, and Canada, with 230, lead the way. In Canada, every province or territory now has at least one online newspaper. Ontario leads the way with 91, Alberta has 44, and British Columbia has 43. Elsewhere in North America, Mexico has 51 online newspapers, 23 newspapers are online in Central America and 36 are online in the Caribbean. Europe is the next most wired continent for newspapers, with 728 online newspaper sites. After the United Kingdom, Norway has the next most -- 53 -- and Germany has 43. Asia (led by India) has 223 online newspapers, South America (led by Bolivia) has 161 and Africa (led by South Africa) has 53. Australia and other islands have 64 online newspapers."
The online versions of newspapers brought a wealth of information. The web provided readers not only with news available online, but also with a whole encyclopedia to help understand them. The reader could click on hyperlinks to get maps, biographies, official texts, political and economic data, photographs, as well as the first attempts in audio and video coverage. The reader could also easily access other articles on the same topic, with search engines sorting out articles by date, author, title or subject.
1995 > AMAZON, A PIONEER IN CYBERCOMMERCE