A (Very) Brief History of the World Wide Web
By user
Published On March 12, 2019
Since its creation exactly 30 years ago, the world wide web has completely changed how we interact with our peers, shop, and even find love. Despite originally being created for research purposes, it is now a tool used by nearly every corporate and personal entity on the planet. Entire communities reside on it and I, personally, can’t remember my life before it was commonplace in the typical American household.
Not to be mistaken for the internet, the World Wide Web is defined as a global information system consisting of pages. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web or “Internet’s Dad”, originally created the World Wide Web while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as a “large hypertext database with typed links” and shockingly, his proposal received little interest. Despite this fact, Berners-Lee’s boss encouraged him to go forward with the project. He then created the world’s first web server on his NeXT workstation at CERN.
By the end of 1990, Berners-Lee developed HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and the first-ever web browser, “WorldWideWeb”, which also doubled as a web editor. Nearly a decade later, the “Dot Com Boom” occurred, which created a surge in web-based start-ups. Sadly, as the novelty of the web decreased, more and more of the companies failed leading up to the 2001 “burst”.
Starting in 2002, user-generated and editable content was increasing substantially in popularity and accessibility. Called “Web 2.0”, this new model of a democratic web is the web we know, love, and use today. Content sharing sites like Youtube, Facebook andMySpace (remember that?) came to be, ultimately altering the way we use the web altogether.
