The Online Supernova: 15 Years Of The World Wide Web. Happy Birthday Web

In August, the World Wide Web celebrated its 15-year anniversary. Where did it come from, and how did we get to where we are today? We bring you an opinionated history.

In late summer of 1991, an information technology consultant named Tim Berners-Lee posted an unassuming message to the alt.hypertext newsgroup, making public a project he had been working on for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). He began, "The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere."

With that memo, Tim Berners-Lee changed the world. No one — not even Berners-Lee himself — saw it coming. Not on this magnitude.

That’s not to say that futurists weren’t able to contemplate a digitally interconnected society. From H.G. Wells (who in an essay entitled "The Brain Organization of the Modern World," envisioned a future in which all knowledge would be readily accessible via microfilm) to Asimov to Anderson to Gibson, science fiction has offered visions of technological marvels: Interstellar space travel. Intelligent robots. Awesome computers (albeit the size of living rooms and often lacking monitors). And some kind of interconnected network that would allow humanity to interact on a global scale.

By George Jones, Mike Elgan, and Valerie Potter
TechWeb

Full Story: http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193000564