History of the World Wide Web

We've been so obsessed and carried away at using the web. From the moment we were introduced to the concept of using the Internet to search and share information, a lot of things have happen. It's more like the internet has its own evolution in motion, from the primitive, stagnant, all-text interface, from what we see now: full of animation, graphics, colors, links, etc.

It would be very interesting to know where it all started, right? So here's what I stumbled into by accident while browsing:

Who invented the World Wide Web
and was recently knighted for it?


Combating the Digital Divide:
Tim Berners-Lee with the original Web browser.

Tim Berners-Lee, the London-born scientist who invented the World Wide Web, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on Friday, July 16, 2004. He received the knighthood in recognition of his services to the development of the Internet through the invention of the Web, a system to organize, link and browse pages on the Internet. The Queen made the 49-year-old scientist a knight commander, the second-highest rank of the Order of the British Empire, in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

Dubbed the "Father of the Web", he came up with a system over 10 years ago to organize, link and browse net pages. The famously modest man said he was "quite an ordinary person", and although it felt strange, he was "honored". Sir Tim was recently reunited with the machine he used to invent the web when he e-mailed 80 schools from the UN's summit on the information society.

The British scientist, who lives in the US, was told he was getting the unexpected Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year honors list a few days ago - by telephone, not by e-mail. He said he never expected his invention would lead to such an accolade.

The physicist created his hypertext program, which was to revolutionize the net, while he was at the particle physics institute, Cern, in Geneva. The computer code he came up with let scientists easily share research findings across a computer network. In the early 1990s, it was dubbed the "world wide web", and is still the basis of the net as we know it.

If Tim Berners-Lee had decided to patent his idea in 1989, the Internet would be a different place. Instead, the World Wide Web became free to anyone who could make use of it. The Internet has many fathers: Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, who came up with a system to let different computer networks interconnect and communicate; Ray Tomlinson, the creator of e-mail and the "@" symbol; Ted Nelson, who coined the term hypertext; and scores of others. But only one person conceived of the World Wide Web (originally, Berners-Lee called it a "mesh" before changing it to a "web"). Before him, there were no "browsers," nothing known as "hypertext markup language," no "www" in any Internet address, no "URLs," or uniform resource locators.

Because he and his colleague, Robert Cailliau, a Belgian, insisted on a license-free technology, today a Gateway computer with a Linux operating system and a browser made by Netscape can see the same Web page as any other personal computer, system software or Internet browser. If his employer at the time, CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, had sought royalties, Berners-Lee said, he thought the world would have 16 different "Webs" on the Internet today.

Sir Tim recently told the BBC World Service's Go Digital program his invention was "just another program", and that he originally wanted it to help achieve understanding. "The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information. The idea was that by writing something together, and as people worked on it, they could iron out misunderstanding." Sir Tim said the honor was an acknowledgement that the net was becoming globally powerful, and not just a "passing trend".

"There was a time when people felt the Internet was another world, but now people realize it's a tool that we use in this world." He added that his knighthood proves what can happen to "ordinary people" who work on things that "happen to work out", like the web. "What's at stake here is the whole spirit in which software has been developed to date," he said. "If you can imagine a computer doing it, then you can write a computer program to do it. That spirit has been behind so many wonderful developments. And when you connect that to the spirit of the Internet, the spirit of openness and sharing, it's terribly stifling to creativity. It's stifling to the academic side of doing research and thinking up new ideas; it's stifling to the new industry and the new enterprises that come out of that."

Sir Tim currently heads up the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, where he is now based as an academic.

Seminar Accomplished!

Last night I was still at lost as to how go about my presentation on "Money Making through the Internet". I tried downloading a copy of my previous presentation, one that I presented in another school under the same theme, but realized it wasn't of much help because most of the topics deal mostly on I.T. application. I have a different audience to face, college studs who are taking accountancy and commerce.

After hours of moving back and forth (it's a mannerism I inherited from my Dad!), I was finally able to get something running on my computer. I took a quick glanced at the clock.. what! it's already 2:30 in the middle of the night. After some more typing, I finally got it right, with a few more empty slides to fill in. I need to get some sleep, I thought.....

When I woke up, the clock says: 7:05am. Yeah right, my seminar time is 8:00am and I'm still trying to compose myself. Fast forward...............

I'm still sleepy when I got to the venue, my co-league was already doing the preliminary presentation. Good thing he was assigned to talk for some time, gave me enough time to prepare and to condition...........

That's strange, I didn't felt that nervous when I started my talk, must have already fade away from several minutes of waiting.

Talk, talk, talk, click, click, click... I keep staring at my cellphone time, don't want to go beyond the time. I started around past 9am, ended past 12nn. I didn't even notice the long hours I was presenting. The students seemed to be attentive (what a relief!), listening eagerly to what I'm saying. A day before, I requested that small pieces of paper be made available to students so that they can write down questions instead of having to stand up and speak out (students hate that!). Well, it proved to be the right thing to do: I got several papers with questions....

One asked about how to ensure that when they work online, they get paid and not cheated:
I explained to them the process of escrow, wherein the website who acts as mediator between workers and clients would ask clients to deposit the money which is intended for service rendered. These escrow would remain with the site until the worker would be able to finish the job, with the money in escrow released to them. So even if the client suddenly disappears, money still remains in escrow and would be awarded to the worker later on.

Another question, about sample sites that offer web templates so that they can easily create one with ease. I recommended webs.com, and told them they can search more using google.

Another question, how to advertise one's product on the web. I said it's better that they put up a virtual store to showcase their products. They can also place ads in sites that offer free posting of classified ads like sulit.com.ph

What else can I recall.... ah yes, someone ask about marketing products or inventions, and about being safe from being copied by others. I told them they should have it patented or copyrighted first before they market those products.

Another question was about which money transfer method is best (I explain to them about Western Union, Payoneer, and Paypal). I told them that paypal is best at present because it's most convenient and cheap.

One more question was about disadvantages of E-commerce. Well I told them that it all depends on how much awareness they have about policies on the net, rules and guidelines of online transaction, among others. The more informed and aware they are, the lesser it becomes for disadvantages to pop out.

What a day! Although we finished at past 12, it was like a whole day, or maybe it was because I was too tired (and starved!)

It was a great morning for me, sharing what's new on the Net, and specially giving students actual ideas on how they can start earning on the Net. The best part was the "after part": I got a big treat for lunch.

I'll try to talk about other key topics I discussed during the seminar. I have to go, still a lot of things to do.....