Last month, the World Wide Web had its 25th
birthday. It was in 1989 that Sir Berners-Lee came up with the idea that has
changed the world in ways that would have been unimaginable then. It’s hard to
believe the massive extent of change that has taken place in those short 25
years, which is an incredibly short period of time in the grand sweep of
history.
Prior to 1989, the Internet existed without the World Wide
Web. Many people think the two are the same, but they are not. The Internet is a large network of computers
and other devices, that enables computer files to be stored and shared
with others on the network. Prior to the Web, the files were stored under
various hierarchical arrangements, mostly the old tree form, which required
going to specific servers and searching for a particular file. And they didn’t
have Google then to do the searching.
Berners-Lee’s idea was to connect the access to the various
files by using links to enable direct access to them. With those links, the
resulting system would resemble a spider web. The idea now seems very
elementary and basic but then it was revolutionary. And of course, it wasn’t as
simple as all that when you got down to actual implementation.
It was in 1989 that Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to CERN
management on the subject, entitled “Information Management: A Proposal”. The paper is still available on the CERN site.
While Berners-Lee laid the groundwork, the Web didn’t really take off until
1990, when the Browser Mosaic was released. It was the first graphical browser
and made the navigation of the Web easy and intuitive. And the Pew Research
Centre has done some great research on the growth in the Internet since that
time, showing, among other things, that the percentage of American adults who
use the internet has grown from 14% in 1995 to 89% in 2010. They catalogue why
that has been a good thing. And it has. Check it out.
The Internet epoch has been quite a ride! Just imagine what will happen in the next 25 years!
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