prehistory

 prehistory  in general refers to history before writing; specifically for the indieweb, prehistory refers to writings and concepts before the web itself was created and launched. I.e. articles about the internet, or networks, or distributed/decentralized computing, hypermedia, etc.

See also history and timeline for more recent relevant items of historical relevance to the indieweb.

1998

 * 1998-?-? Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas by Mark Bernstein, creator of Storyspace. An early essay on the design of hypertext using a garden metaphor.

1969

 * 1969-10-29 The first ARPANET link was established between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford Research Institute at 22:30 hours.

1964

 * 1964-09 Paul Baran On Distributed Communications: Introduction to Distributed Communication Networks (.pdf) published by RAND; A seminal underpinning document encouraging the design  of a more robust communications network using "redundancy" and "digital" technology. First (?) publication to diagram architectures of silos and decentralized networks.

1961

 * 1961-05-31 Leonard Kleinrock Information Flow in Large Communication Nets: Proposal for a Ph.D. Thesis (MIT) (.pdf) The document that ultimately launched the internet.

1948

 * 1948-07 Claude E. Shannon A Mathematical Theory of Communication (The Bell System Technical Journal) - The underlying document for the digital communication era.

1945

 * 1945-07 As We May Think by Vannevary Bush (The Atlantic Monthly). An essay which has been described as visionary and influential, anticipating many aspects of information society. Vannevar Bush was also incidentally an academic adviser to Claude Shannon.