Blog #4: Com Tech

The world wide web is a computer system that enables information sharing through an internet network. It consists of public websites and pages that users can access through their own personal devices.

Today, the world wide web serves as a means of connection among individuals across the globe. The web is used to share, create, and communicate. 

When thinking of what the world wide web means for us in today’s day-in-age, we often think of social networking sites, blogs, etc., but its initial purpose for invention was much more simple than what it is used for now.

In 1989, a British scientist by the name of Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web. His motivation behind this invention stemmed from a need for automated information sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.

Tim Berners-Lee was employed at CERN when he came up with and produced the coding for the world wide web. Due to the fact that CERN is a worldwide center for scientific research, the need for a system to effectively communicate across the globe was vital for their livelihoods.

Although Tim Berners-Lee wrote his first proposal in March of 1989, the first web server and browser were not ready for use until the following year. The initial development was not suitable for public use, either. 

Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT computer to establish the code for his web server, making the accessibility of it quite restricted due to the fact that very few users had access to a NeXT computer platform. At this time, NeXT computers were mainly used for educational or business purposes, but even then, they were not very widespread or popular.  

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee released his world wide web software which included a line-mode browser that could run on any system, thanks to Nicola Pellow who developed it during her student work at CERN. It was the little advancements such as these that contributed to the overall launch of the world wide web.

In December of that same year, Paul Kunz and Louise Addis presented the first online web server to the United States. Again, it was only used in laboratories, but the important part was that the idea had still made its way into the country and was just inches away from breaking the surface into society. 

Finally in 1993, the NCSA released the software that ran in the X Window browser. This made the world wide web accessible to the public and started the progression of the web into what we know it as today.

The world wide web had simple beginnings, but it has since morphed into a public domain that encompasses everything from social media accounts to news to entertainment. And we can access all of this through the click of a button. 

Every computer, phone, and even link connects us all back to the world wide web. It is everywhere, granting us unlimited knowledge to the world around us.