This article is meant to introduce and illustrate the use of six central Web technologies, which are described in Section 3. We assume the continuing trend to pervasive computers and networks implementing the National Information Infrastructure (NII) as the melding of today's Web, consumer PC, computer and communication infrastructure. Perhaps this will embody Gordon Bell's SNAP concept (Scalable Networks And Platforms), which suggests universal commodity PC and ATM network hardware with probably a growing use of Windows NT as the dominant operating system [Bell:95a]. In Section 2.1, we describe the classic Web client server architecture and Section 2.2 describes the standard turn of the century () NII scenario. Section 2.3 is devoted to WebWindows, which describes the new universal API (application program interface) offered by the world viewed as a collection of Web servers and clients. We believe WebWindows is so much productive and powerful than conventional software interfaces that it will become the dominant and hardware independent ``operating system'' [Fox:96c]. In the final part of Section 2, we discuss NII applications and services briefly to show how they are built in terms of Web technologies and the WebWindows interfaces.
Section 3 discusses and illustrates our six chosen technologies--PERL, Java, JavaScript, VRML, web-linked databases, and digital multimedia.
Finally, in Section 4, we describe the role of the six particular applications--IntraNets and Business Enterprise Systems, Healthcare, the Financial Industry, Education, Manufacturing, and finally, Crisis Management, or command and control. The last three applications are described in greater detail than the first three.
Already, the Web links some 400,000 Web servers together [IDS:97a] but technologies, such as Java and a growing use of interactive and collaborative applications will either directly (run a server on client machine) or indirectly (enhanced browsers) turn all clients into servers. Furthermore, JavaVM (Virtual Machine) supports client side multithreading, and so differences between (multitasking, e.g., UNIX) servers, and (multithreading, e.g., JavaVM) client technologies are, indeed, fading away.