The World Wide Web Turns 15
As i am getting prepared for an examination on web services i learn about the historic and technological roots that make up what we call the internet. The part that is used the most — taking eMail aside — is the world wide web accessed through web browsers. When Tim Berners-Lee has put the idea of linking documents across the network into reality, hypertext was not such a new thing anymore. But instead of implementing some proprietary application, he thought of hypertext as an open protocol that could be built upon what had been present by then. 15 years ago the world of academia was already communicating via Newsgroups, eMail, FTP, etc. Those applications made use of a standardized internet protocol suite that enabled computers connected to networks — and consequently the geeks in front of them — to talk to each other. Berners-Lee put the pieces together and implemented the first client and server of the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) on a NeXTcube at CERN. The WWW was born.
Now everybody speaks of web 2.0 and i am reminded of my last lecture in developmental psychology when i learnt what subjective age really means: until a certain time in life everybody wishes to be older than one actually is. Maybe this is the case for the web. And maybe the web is just going through a tough time these days. It just screams to get attention. Every minute it proclaims the next big thing — or at least a new major version. Couldn’t it be that the web is just in its puberty?
via OSNews: On the 15th Birthday of the World Wide Web, a Look Back
