CERN’s first website was rereleased today in honor of the 20th anniversary of CERN’s royalty-free release of World Wide Web technology.
From Computerworld:
The World Wide Web was created at CERN in 1989 by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee. It was originally developed to meet the demand for information sharing between physicists in universities and institutes around the world.
You’re probably questioning yourself right now because you were sure that Al Gore invented the Internet, but please, don’t make this more complicated than it has to be.
Besides, the Internet and the World Wide Web are two completely different concepts. But didn’t Al Gore invent both?
Moving along, and for the sake of nostalgia, we’d like to present the sound of dial-up, which we all should remember, if not too well:
And thanks to the good folks at CERN as well as Mr. Gore, advances in technology over the last two decades have enabled wonderful things like chat rooms, chat roulette, and cat chat roulette to come into existence.
And from our read of CERN’s WWW Executive Summary, things appear to be right on schedule:
The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.
The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. Originally aimed at the High Energy Physics community, it has spread to other areas and attracted much interest in user support, resource discovery and collaborative work areas.
The thought of information being shared around the world with no concept of cost or currency seems revolutionary even today, let alone in 1993, when cheers of “Rudy” filled the movie theaters and Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” made us think anything is possible.
It was also the supposed reasoning behind the actions of the legendary Aaron Swartz when he downloaded the goodies (academic articles) from JSTOR, for which he was arrested and charged by the federal government.
As is well known, Swartz killed himself on January 11, 2013 at the age of 26, with many blaming the government’s targeting of Swartz for his tragic end.
CERN’s 20 year anniversary should make us ask how the Web has evolved in light of it’s designers’ intentions.
If the intention is freedom of information by way of education, is humanity progressing toward this goal of the utmost importance? Or are we moving toward more walls by way of SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, or whateverPA?
No answer, just the question. But please, feel free to comment below!
