préweb

Préweb is a term used in digital history to denote the period and set of practices that preceded the World Wide Web. It encompasses the networks, protocols, services, and communities that facilitated online information exchange before hyperlinks and the Web's collaborative authoring model became dominant. The préweb context includes both academic and commercial infrastructures that supported electronic communication and data sharing.

Key technologies of the préweb include ARPANET and the adoption of TCP/IP, electronic mail (SMTP) and Usenet for asynchronous discussion, and file transfer protocols such as FTP. Directory and indexing systems like Gopher and WAIS aided information discovery, while early hypertext experiments—along with projects like Ted Nelson’s Xanadu—shaped ideas about linking and multimedia documents, even before a universal web standard existed.

Access during the préweb era often relied on text-based terminals, mainframes, early personal computers, dial-up connections, and bulletin board systems (BBS). Content was organized in layered services and directories rather than the universal hyperlink structure, and search relied on local databases, directory listings, and rudimentary crawlers rather than modern web search engines.

Governance and culture in this period emphasized open standards and interoperability, with influential contributions from standards bodies, RFCs, and academic communities. Debates about copyright, licensing, and the permissibility of linking and content reuse influenced later web practices. The préweb era helped seed the idea that networked information should be globally interconnected.

The World Wide Web, introduced in the early 1990s, built on ideas from the préweb: hypertext linking, universal addressing, and a flexible transfer protocol. The Web’s emergence reflected both technological advances and a shift in user expectations toward easily navigable, interconnected information.