{"id":1875,"date":"2013-04-22T09:57:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T13:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nccomputertech.com\/?p=1875"},"modified":"2013-04-22T09:57:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T13:57:23","slug":"meet-the-webs-operating-system-http","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2013\/04\/22\/meet-the-webs-operating-system-http\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Web's Operating System: HTTP"},"content":{"rendered":"

The HTTP standard, the language of web servers, was born humbly in 1990 as the hypertext transfer protocol. HTTP was basically just a few verbs\u2014simple commands\u2014that a browser said to a web server. The most essential of these were GET, which asks a server for information, and POST, which sends info back. There were no fine-grained access controls or bidirectional links. There was no payment system. HTTP has always been just \u2026 barely \u2026 enough. But over time people came to accept it. When they wanted to improve it, as Twitter and many others have, they just built atop it, with APIs.
\nThis approach has been so successful that the HT part of HTTP, the \u201chypertext\u201d part, is far less descriptive than it used to be. Much of the traffic that flows through the web is pure data objects, not text-with-links. We have dynamic status updates, maps that zoom with a scrollwheel, and yet underneath it\u2019s still all HTTP.
\nHTTP is simple, constrained, ultimately a little boring. But without it we\u2019d have no Wikipedia, no Facebook. It\u2019s possible our huge online communities could have arisen through some other system, but there\u2019s no reason for alternative history when you have the real thing: That simple loop between browser and server (GET a page, POST a response) has led to the weirdest flowering of creativity in history.
\nWhy weirdest? Because there has never been a creative medium so unfettered. It\u2019s not just that web servers proved to be an unprecedentedly cheap way to distribute ideas. Through its hand-off nature, HTTP also created an unbelievable tension: It was so simple, so resolutely nonprescriptive, that most of the questions about how to use it\u2014about passwords, privacy, and most of all content\u2014were left to us.
\nEvery new idea that piggybacked onto HTTP would entail endless debates over the rules. Which is why the remarkable communities of the web\u2014Twitter, Facebook, 4chan, Wikipedia\u2014are on a fundamental level just different ways of defining a commons. Yes, Wikipedia is a very large set of encyclopedia pages, but at its core it\u2019s really a community dedicated to enforcing the norms of Wikipedia. Its polar opposite is the seemingly lawless 4chan, but that site, too, lives by its own rigid norms\u2014hence the designation of \u201cnewfags\u201d who have yet to internalize the unofficial code. The Internet is so defined by debates over rules that its rules sometimes begin as parodies of rules. Rule 34 holds that \u201cif it exists, there is porn of it\u201d \u2014 leading to all sorts of generative behavior, like people creating images that show Africa humping South America.
\nIn its wonderful vagueness, HTTP encoded a profoundly upbeat idea about our ability to come together, to fill in the blanks. And that crazy optimism has proven to be correct. Over the past two decades HTTP has forced us, almost accidentally, to clarify what sorts of information are worth defending. It has forced us to articulate who owns what. It gave work to the admin or moderator, the person who could tease out the rules and, for better or worse, make sure that others follow them.
\nIt\u2019s that leap of faith that made HTTP the most important technology of the past 20 years. That simple handshake is the firmament upon which we have built trillion-dollar cathedrals and bazaars, the base upon which we construct other protocols and networks. Because HTTP is ultimately the one social contract on the web that, amidst a million other debates over standards, rules, policies, and behavior, we have collectively agreed to trust.
\nvia Meet the Web’s Operating System: HTTP | Wired Magazine | Wired.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The HTTP standard, the language of web servers, was born humbly in 1990 as the hypertext transfer protocol. 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