TWENTY-five years ago, the World Wide Web was just an idea in a technical
paper from an obscure, young computer scientist at a European physics lab.
That
idea from Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN lab in Switzerland, outlining a way to
easily access files on linked computers, paved the way for a global phenomenon
that has touched the lives of billions of people.
He
presented the paper on March 12, 1989, which history has marked as the birthday
of the Web.
But
the idea was so bold, it almost didn't happen.
“There
was a tremendous amount of hubris in the project at the beginning,” said Marc
Weber, creator and curator of the internet history program at the Computer
History Museum in Silicon Valley. “Tim Berners-Lee proposed it out of the blue,
unrequested.” At first, said Weber, the CERN colleagues “completely ignored the
proposal”.
The US
military began studying the idea of connected computer networks in the 1950s,
and in 1969 launched Arpanet, the forerunner to the internet. But the World Wide
Web was just one of several ideas to connect the public.
Berners-Lee convinced CERN to adopt his system, demonstrating its
usefulness by compiling a lab phone book into an online index. A key aspect of
the design put forward by Berners-Lee was that it worked across various computer
operating systems. And it offered the ability to click on links to access files
hosted on computers located elsewhere.
The
Web was not a winner out of the gate. There were rival online services such as
US-based CompuServe and France's Minitel but they involved fees, while
Berners-Lee's system was free. “It started as a real underdog; no one would have
predicted the system would have succeeded,” Weber said.
The
Gopher system owned by the University of Minnesota was beating the Web in the
early 1990s.
Weber
credited former US vice president Al Gore with helping the Web topple Gopher by
getting government agencies in Washington to use the system.
The
launch of the Whitehouse.gov website was seen as a huge stamp of approval for
the Web.
In
1993, the Web system was released free into the public, while those behind
Gopher started charging, according to Weber.
“Most
people don't realise that both the Web and the internet had competitors,” Weber
said.
“Had
they lost the battles, we would still be going online, but it could certainly be
different, a lot more top-down control like the walled garden at Facebook.” Web
competitors were online environments controlled by operators.
Under
the Berners-Lee model, people were free to publish what they wished on
internet-linked computers.
Internet titans such as Google and Yahoo were built on helping people
find pages of interest as the amount of information being hosted on servers
exploded.
“At
its birth, many of us were guilty of a lack of imagination and just didn't see
what the Web would do to the future,” Gartner analyst Michael McGuire told
AFP.
“The
personal computer changed the way we work, but it was the Web that disrupted and
changed a lot of industries.” The ability to freely access files on the Web has
shaken traditional business models in music, film, news and more.
“The
internet pushes power to the edges,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public
policy at the US-based Center for Democracy & Technology.
“Anybody can be a listener and anybody can be a publisher on the same
network; there has never been anything like it.” A powerful underlying tenet of
the Web is that it is egalitarian and open, but those principles are under
threat, according to Dempsey.
It
remains to be seen whether the Web is hobbled with regulations and fragmented by
governments walling off portions in countries.
“You
will never stop the teenage kid from watching little snippets of cute cats,”
Dempsey said.
“The
trouble is you could limit the ability of people to criticise the government or
make a tiered internet in which it is harder for innovators, critics, or human
rights activists to reach a global audience.” Threats to a Web based on equality
concern its creators, according to Weber.
While
the Web unified the internet decades ago, there is nothing “written in stone”
saying it can't fragment anew, the historian reasoned.
In the
US, major internet service providers have won the right to give some online
traffic preferential treatment, and governments have shown willingness to invade
online privacy or restrain Web freedom.
A big
battle for the shape of the Web could be the effect of billions more people
getting online with smartphones in parts of developing parts of the
world.
“The
Web is really only half built; it is not worldwide yet,” Weber said.
Picture: A
screenshot of the first web page, created to explain the World Wide Web from
CERN
With thanks to The
Australian
From You Tube:
From You Tube:
The Inventor of the World Wide Web and one of the founding fathers of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee is a man who has created a network of information exchange so powerful and widespread in its implementation that his place in history is guaranteed.The Difference between the internet and the World Wide Web
To Celebrate Alan Turing's 100th Birthday, the father of modern computing, we present this long discussion on the development of the Web, its current use in the world in society and work and its future is discussed freely as the Internet has been surfed for over 20 years, since its development as a research tool at CERN.
The World Wide Web owes its very existence to CERN, as the first Hypertext Transfer Protocall (HTTP) was performed in C code on a NEXT terminal using a Cisco Systems IP router. Its attractiveness in sharing information with such a user-friendly interface, thanks to NEXT Computer Company, founded by Steve Jobs after he was ousted from Apple Computer, allowed it to grow from a "Vague, But Exciting" idea into a global phenomenon which has connected humanity as never before.
