Happy Burrday World Wide Web
April 30 2008 is the 15th birthday of the world wide web; specifically, this date marks the 15th anniversary of CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) announcing that the web was free for use by anyone. The UK scientist Tim Berners-Lee is individually credited with inventing the web in the course of his work at CERN’s headquarters, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, based in Geneva, Switzerland.
The web and the internet
Although the web and the internet are different technologies altogether – the web at its core a particular system of interlinked documents, the internet a vast network of interconnected computers over which the web is accessed – these two are inextricably bound together, all but synonymous in the minds of many.
To commemorate the web’s 15th year, Tech & Gadgets looks at 15 ways in which the world wide web has irrevocably changed our lives over the last decade and a half – mostly, though not always, for the better.
15 ways the web changed our lives
1. The rise of online news
The growth and proliferation of web-based news outlets have increasingly brought internet users online for their daily updates; many are now turning to the web as their primary source of news, rather than the traditional print and television outlets.
2. Global reference library
The web as it was originally conceived by Tim Berners-Lee was an electronic means for researchers to share information across wide geographical areas. Today this is only one of the web’s many functions but still a significant one, with reference material, academic and otherwise, made available to users worldwide.
3. Plagiarism
A natural flipside to a world of easily accessible information is the plagiarism that is just a quick copy and paste away. With online encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia at the fingertips of school kids and students around the world, web-enabled cheating is an ever-present temptation. Some universities have accordingly brought in software to scan essays and reports for tell-tale signs of copied web material.
4. Search engines
Ever more sophisticated search engines shape the way in which the world experiences the web, and very few sessions on the web are complete without a search or two. For those of us who chiefly rely on these devices to discover websites, it is the search engine that decides what we end up looking at.
5. Liberating information and opinion
Despite concerted efforts by various governments to suppress and censor what appears on the web, this kind of total control has proved to be very difficult indeed. The web has made information and opinion, particularly political opinion, all but internationally irrepressible.
6. Blogs
The blog – a cornerstone of the emphatically interactive web 2.0 – gave a voice to formerly silent web users the world over. Suddenly web presences were not just for corporations and shops but effortlessly available to all, and for whatever purpose: from the worthy causes of activism, politics and citizen journalism to simple web-based diaries and oddball internet humour.
7. Webmail
Though e-mail is not strictly a web technology, the overwhelming popularity of webmail has obviously revolutionised the way we communicate with each other, allowing users to access their inboxes via straightforward websites from any internet-accessing computer they can get their hands on.
8. Social networking
Another pervasive web 2.0 innovation, social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo have helped countless web users make new friends and catch up with old ones.
9. World wide distraction
Though originally intended for sharing knowledge, the web has proved to be quite as effective as an endless distraction from the things on which we are supposed to be concentrating. Perhaps it is best that we do not know the sum total of hours collectively lost to trawling the web for useless trivia.
10. Shopping through your browser
Online shopping – not to mention online auctions, banking, price comparison sites and customer reviews – has shaken up the retail and commercial sectors in a way that would have been barely imaginable before the birth of the web, empowering web-based consumers everywhere.
11. Online identity theft
Partly a repercussion of the above point, the amount of personal data shared over the web – and the way in which it is made secure and private – is a serious concern. Malware, spyware and plain old poor data security have had us thinking twice about what we are willing to share with a website.
12. Digital entertainment
Online video, radio, television, music and games have all drastically altered the way in which we consume entertainment – entertainment that traditionally belonged to offline media and formats. The way in which we have enthusiastically embraced streaming and downloads has got the music, film and television industries each wanting in on the action – or struggling to keep up.
13. Entertainment of the adult variety
With a more-than-sizeable chunk of the web solely dedicated to adult content of all varieties, no discussion of the web could be complete without a mention of pornography. The world wide web has certainly transformed access to supposedly adults-only material.
14. Time shrinking
The web has had a major hand in increasing our expectation of instant gratification – and our general impatience.
If you wanted to track down information in days gone by, you might have called up directory enquiries, gotten a phone number, rung the number, waited to speak to someone, then spent five minutes on the phone requesting that something be sent to you by post. You would then quite happily wait two or three days for it to turn up. Now this three day operation can be crammed into about three minutes at most.
15. Online travel booking
Where would budget airlines be without the world wide web? With web users increasingly booking their flights and holidays online, long gone are the days of traipsing to Thomas Cook and struggling home with 32 different glossy brochures.
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