Yes, today (March 12, 2014) is officially the internet's 25th birthday. In honour of the occasion, Google's home page includes a cake with a “25″ candle on top to remind everyone.
The world wide web, as modern users may know, was founded on March 12, 1989 by (Sir) Tim Burners-Lee. But, though Burner-Lee is credited with 'founding the web', the internet itself can be traced back decades earlier. Right back to 1957 in fact with the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA - later DARPA). Historians love to credit the genesis of this auspicious organisation to President Dwight Eisenhower (who pushed for the creation of ARPA), with the inference being that the 5 star General launched ARPA because he had a burning desire to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge. When in fact the truth is far more mundane - and some might even say, devious. Because while (what came to be known as ARPA) had been bubbling on US university campuses for several years, it had not received any significant funding from Washington. Then, in October 1957, the unthinkable happened. Russia launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite. And suddenly, Bible bashing middle-America was confronted with the unsettling knowledge that those damn Ruskies could see EVERYTHING they were doing...from space!
Needless to say, a US President was never going to take this slap in the face, lying down. So Eisenhower pushed through ARPA (which of course was actually a part of the Department of Defense), and so the war for technological supremacy was cranked up a couple more notches.
The creation of ARPA led to a gentleman by the name of Ted Nelson creating Project Xanadu in 1960. And it was Nelson who coined the term ‘Hypertext’ in 1963. Hypertext is contained in hyperlinks (which are known today simply as ‘links’) and is the core component of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) which is the language of the web as we know it.
Berners-Lee comes into the picture (historically speaking) around 1980 when he came up with the concept of the World Wide Web (as it would become) while working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. During his research Berners-Lee wrote a rudimentary program for storing information using random associations. The program - named 'Enquire' - was only ever intended for his own personal use however, and was never actually published.
In Tim Berners-Lee's own words :
On the 25th birthday of the web, I ask you to join in - to help us imagine and build the future standards for the web, and to press for every country to develop a digital bill of rights to advance a free and open web for everyone. Learn more and speak up for the sort of web we really want with #web25.
The Internet and the World Wide Web are NOT the Same Thing
All the nerds happy now? Good. Then we can move on...
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