From its instigation the WWW was designed as an informational structure for the pooling and locating of information customisable by each user (Berners-Lee, 1989, p. 01). The underlying concept of the WWW predated Berners-Lee by sixty years through the works of Vannevar Bush. Bush was concerned with finding ways to make machinery help people in dealing with information “selection by association, rather than by indexing” (Bush, 1945, p06) from his experience of the inadequacies of paper based indexing systems since the 1930’s. He proposed a device called the “Memex” which would augment human intellect by operating as a vast data storage device with links and search functions.
Bush was interested in the creation of pathways to data “when the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined” (Bush, 1945, p07).
“Memex” was similar to hypertext, only it was mechanical and designed thirty years before Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson’s work on hypertext. Bush did not publish his ideas until 1945 with the essay “As We May Think” where he considered that “the human mind operates by association” (Bush, 1945, p06) and offered the “Memex” as a method to support that human function for recovering data.
This initial idea was a key influence on Douglas Engelbart in the underlying technology that Ted Nelson would describe as “hypertext” in 1982. Engelbart working at Stanford Research Institute in the 1960’s, acknowledges the influence of Bush in a letter he wrote to him (Engelbart, 1962, p. 01). Engelbart demonstrated the On-Line System (NLS) which manipulated structured documents in the San Francisco Fall Joint Computer Conference in 1968 and then made the same documents available in a collaborative environment located some miles away.
Accurate information handling is a key to good customer service, as it facilitates access to transaction details and ledger, allowing a quick and efficient response to customer needs. The augmentation, user control and accessibility of information were of primary importance in the development of the database system Hypercard (launched in 1987) created by Bill Atkinson who also designed MacPaint. Hypercard capitalised on hypertext using hyperlink technology users where able to create ‘hot spots’ allowing click through connections between user defined data stacks. These stacks could store text, images or music files dependant upon the user’s requirements. This allowed for user associations and supported search linking functions as specified in Bush’s “Memex”.
In the late 1980’s Tim Berners-Lee was attempting to resolve a problem associated with “loss of information about complex evolving systems” (Berners-Lee, 1989, p.01) due to staff turnover at Conseil European pour la Recherché Nucléaire (CERN). CERN operated in a hierarchical management structure but Berners-Lee suggested an informational structure forming across groups. The purpose was to share information, equipment, software and general communications using hypertext documents at different locations on a distributed network (heterogeneous, dissimilar elements or parts environments for computational, contextual, and cooperative design). He established the theory of “Mesh” and in 1990 while creating the code he coined the term World Wide Web (WWW). This WWW context provided a key customer service role by maintaining consistent and accurate information in an accessible environment.
The WWW supports a number of network technologies including intranet, extranet and internet. These three networks in turn are visualised through front end user interfaces like browsers including Microsoft® Internet Explorer, Netscape® Navigator, Mozilla Firefox® etc. Using standardised languages like Hypertext markup language (HTML), Extensible Hypertext markup language (XHTML) have enabled the addition of a standard user front-end tools or browsers for using intranet, extranet and internet data retrieval points. While the languages involved are different customer service is provided with a generic visual medium of search options, hyperlink lists, database driven queries and standardise visual outputs using icons, text and images.
Networks receive information and provide collaborative spaces in two distinct ways, through synchronisation or asynchronous methods. Synchronisation means information does appear at the same time as its input to a network. Asynchronous networking means information does not appear or exist in the same time period as its input. “Marketers will have to place their emphasis on obtaining accurate and timely information about customers and markets and on providing precisely the type and level of service that customer wants” (Barnes, 1993, p. 45). It is imperative in providing customer service that information is received in a timely fashion, finding out the information is old after passing it on, irritates and inclines customers to find alternative service suppliers. Control of information flows within the firm and between the firm and its customers will define, the customer experience and save the customer service department being relegated to a reactionary role, through problem solving. Internet customer services are based around synchronised databases that maintain accuracy, by overwriting old data with current data.
An intranet is a network located within an organisation or company which may have many physical operator locations or nodes but uses one central database or information server. Robert Metcalf's law states that “the "value" or "power" of a network increases in proportion to the square of the number of nodes on the network” (Metcalf, 1973, p. 279). Intranets use both synchronous and asynchronous technologies to control the flow of information. An extranet is an extension of an intranet into a secure virtual private network (VPN) to support B2B functions or a customer B2C interface for purchase and service support. The internet is a network of networks which may include many intranet, extranet or WWW portals.
References
- Barnes, J.G (1993). New technologies, new markets and changing marketing practices. Irish Marketing Review. Vol. 6; p. 45 [Electronic version]. Retrieved November 17th, 2004.
- Berners-Lee, Tim (1989, March) Information Management: A Proposal. The original proposal of the WWW, HTMLized. Retrieved November 1st, 2004 from http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
- Bush, V. (1945). As We May Think. Atlantic Monthly, July[Electronic version]. Retrieved November 1st, 2004 from http://www.csi.uottawa.ca/~dduchier/misc/vbush/awmt.html
- Engelbart, D. (1962). Letter to Vannevar Bush and Program On Human Effectiveness. Stanford University [Electronic version]. Retrieved November 1st, 2004 from http://www.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Engelbart/Engelbart_LettertoBush.html
- Metcalf, R.M (1972). Strategies for operating systems in computer networks. Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery Annual Conference, USA Vol1 p. 278-281.
