Thursday, August 18, 2011

The web turns twenty - Difference Engine: Happy anniversary?

Aug 12th 2011, 10:37 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES

IT IS always a little disconcerting to realise a generation has grown up never knowing what it was like to manage without something that is taken for granted today. A case in point: the World Wide Web (WWW), which celebrated the 20th anniversary of its introduction last Saturday. It is no exaggeration to say that not since the invention of the printing press has a new media technology altered the way people think, work and play quite so extensively. With the web having been so thoroughly embraced socially, politically and economically, the world has become an entirely different place from what it was just two decades ago. Whether the web has made it a better place or a worse one is for readers to decide.

It was on August 6th, 1991, that Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, created the first-ever web page—a summary of his WWW project along with explanations to help visitors build websites of their own and to search the web for information. No screen-shots survive of the original web page; its original address simply redirects visitors to a contemporary site providing details of the project’s early days at CERN.

Continue reading ....

No comments:

Post a Comment