The Stage Crew of the Digital World: World Wide Web
Have you browsed online recently, whether it was watching an online video or just looking at a website? Regardless, have you ever wondered how you and billions of others can so easily access just about anything through an online system? I am sure you would have come across the World Wide Web, which is fancy networked system that operates each of our digital worlds. Can you also imagine what the world was like before the internet, and who engineered it?
The internet is such a global and day-to-day tool, many taking a lot of its benefits for granted, but most are unaware how this global game-changer was invented.
Tim Berners-Lee started the WorldWideWeb project at CERN in 1989
The article from Stanford University, also illustrates how Berners-Lee helped create the World Wide Web (WWW) with others like Robert Cailliau and Jean-Francois Groff.
Now, that you know who created the internet, won’t you like to know its original purpose?
According to the CERN website, “The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.”
Berners-Lee’s invention brought about a plethora of unbelievable innovations that would become extremely crucial on a daily basis for students, professionals, governments, businesses, and much more.
Today the internet is a whole lot more developed than what Berners-Lee would have probably imagined.
“There were no standards for computer systems or for the communications between them. There were no LAN’s, no PC’s or Macintoshes, no Unix and no C programming at CERN” — CERN
When the World Wide Web was introduced, many thought it was rather complicated or wasn’t useful. You could say it was ahead of its time. Although, I can’t blame people for thinking it was a weird concept. I would think a digital universe was weird too. But is it?
If we know why the world wide web was conceived, we should also know how it works. I would like to think of the WWW as one huge planet. With the browser’s being the planet’s environment, and the servers being creatures and beings of the planet. Requests and Responses are the ways the creatures and the environment are interacting. Now think of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as the universe. Hypertext Transfer Protocol is used to load web pages in our “planets”.
Before the internet, finding information was a whole lot different. Resources to find information were limited. No search engines like Google were around then. Some may say the search engine was just a static dictionary. However we are lucky to have the dynamic and real time tools that provide information at our finger tips.
As we progress as a connected humanity, we need to be intentional with the growth and use of WWW. So Berners-Lee went on to lead the formulation of a Contract for the Web, with a set of principles that would make our online world safe, authentic and inclusive.
- Principle 1 — Ensure everyone can connect to the internet
- Principle 2 — Keep all of the internet available, all of the time
- Principle 3 — Respect and protect people’s fundamental online privacy and data rights
- Principle 4 — Make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone.
- Principle 5 — Respect and protect people’s privacy and personal data to build online trust.
- Principle 6 — Develop technologies that support the best in humanity and challenge the worst.
- Principle 7 — Be creators and collaborators on the Web.
- Principle 8 — Build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity.
- Principle 9 — Fight for the Web
The world wide web has changed not just the way we learn, but the way we communicate and live. It’s hard to envision a life without the world wide web, even though the world was once in that stage. The way we do things will continue to advance, so let us advance with it.
By the way, have you heard about Web3? Maybe read one of my future blogs, to find out how, and why, it could be the next era of computing.
And hey there, thanks for reading. Appreciate your comments and support.
Samar Bhowmick(@samarsyntax) is a middle schooler that loves to code, solve complex challenges and use programming skills to make this world a lot of fun. All opinions are my own.
