Back in business again
November 15th 2007 14:55
After a few weeks when I haven't been able to access the Internet so readily, I'm pretty much back in business.
To many people using the World Wide Web/Internet, it must seem that this system has been in place forever. And it’s beginning to feel like that to me, too, although I can remember when I first ‘discovered’ the Web after my son and I joined up to use email.
In those days there were very few ‘pictures’ on the Web, and a lot of it appeared (to us, anyway) as typescript pages with hyperlinks. But it was certainly up and functioning when we came across it in the early 1990s. (We’d had a computer since 1989.)
It struck me that I didn’t really know when the Web started, so I did a bit of checking and found that it was invented by (now Sir) Tim Berners-Lee at the end of 1990. The first page he put up on the WWW was named Really Long Link
but this address no longer exists. It was altered later with an alias, but this too has gone. However, you can still see what the page would have looked like.
This page very much resembles my former shop’s first archived email newsletter. (I archived all 187 or so of them, but unfortunately a more recent manager appears to have deleted them.) It has that same typeface (boring by modern standards) and the same attempt to make everything into a hyperlink.
Berners-Lee’s early pages are a fascinating excursion into the past (it’s only the recent past, but it feels like forever). Much of what we’re utterly familiar with now is heralded in these early pages. The world is fortunate that the person who set up the Web made such a good job of it.
We often confuse the idea of the Internet and that of the Web. Berners-Lee clarifies this admirably on the FAQ section of his site:
“The Web is an abstract (imaginary) space of information. On the Net, you find computers -- on the Web, you find document, sounds, videos,.... information. On the Net, the connections are cables between computers; on the Web, connections are hypertext links. The Web exists because of programs which communicate between computers on the Net. The Web could not be without the Net. The Web made the net useful because people are really interested in information (not to mention knowledge and wisdom!) and don't really want to have know about computers and cables.”
To many people using the World Wide Web/Internet, it must seem that this system has been in place forever. And it’s beginning to feel like that to me, too, although I can remember when I first ‘discovered’ the Web after my son and I joined up to use email.
In those days there were very few ‘pictures’ on the Web, and a lot of it appeared (to us, anyway) as typescript pages with hyperlinks. But it was certainly up and functioning when we came across it in the early 1990s. (We’d had a computer since 1989.)
It struck me that I didn’t really know when the Web started, so I did a bit of checking and found that it was invented by (now Sir) Tim Berners-Lee at the end of 1990. The first page he put up on the WWW was named Really Long Link
but this address no longer exists. It was altered later with an alias, but this too has gone. However, you can still see what the page would have looked like.
This page very much resembles my former shop’s first archived email newsletter. (I archived all 187 or so of them, but unfortunately a more recent manager appears to have deleted them.) It has that same typeface (boring by modern standards) and the same attempt to make everything into a hyperlink.
Berners-Lee’s early pages are a fascinating excursion into the past (it’s only the recent past, but it feels like forever). Much of what we’re utterly familiar with now is heralded in these early pages. The world is fortunate that the person who set up the Web made such a good job of it.
We often confuse the idea of the Internet and that of the Web. Berners-Lee clarifies this admirably on the FAQ section of his site:
“The Web is an abstract (imaginary) space of information. On the Net, you find computers -- on the Web, you find document, sounds, videos,.... information. On the Net, the connections are cables between computers; on the Web, connections are hypertext links. The Web exists because of programs which communicate between computers on the Net. The Web could not be without the Net. The Web made the net useful because people are really interested in information (not to mention knowledge and wisdom!) and don't really want to have know about computers and cables.”
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