“While the Phandroid lobby echoes Google’s one-sided plea for ‘openness’, spare a thought for the Worldwide Web which spawned all this innovation, and the NeXT seed of Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, which enabled the world’s first-ever Web server, 20 years ago,” Jonny Evans reports for Computerworld.
“August 6 marks the date the first-ever Web page went online, powered by the world’s first-ever Web server, situated at http://info.cern.ch. Assembled by Sir Tim Berners-Lee using a NeXT computer, the browser was also an editor, enabling an interactive Web experience,” Evans reports. “Unfortunately, with the exception of NeXT machines, most computers just weren’t capable of handling all these features, which is why a browse-only Web was born. Who ran NeXT? Steve Jobs.”
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Evans reports, “It is interesting that Berners-Lee used a NeXT computer both as the server and as the tool with which to write the first browser. Not only did the NeXT architecture allow him to create an interactive experience which we didn’t really see come to fruition for years online, but that experience had to be whittled down in order that other platforms could participate.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “krquet” for the heads up.]
Wow.
Google should shut mother f*ck up. Talk about innovation, where were you Google 20 years? Without NeXT/Apple, there would be no Web, no need for search, and no Google.
“Google should shut mother f*ck up”
Easily the most Open Minded thing I have read all day.
Sure there would be. It just would’ve been written on a different platform.
Steve Jobs/NeXT and of course Al Gore ;D
The world has never recognized the tremendous contributions Steve Jobs has made toward advancing civilization positively on several different fronts. The man is a towering titan visionary and doer. Earth has been blessed by Steve Jobs.
Well said!
Well said, well written! It deserves to be included in Steve (far, very far away) obituary. God keeps Steve with us for a long time ahead.
“…seems to be a curious lack of ambition and imagination.” ~ Nature.
Reminiscent, perhaps, of another corporate (with photocopy machines for R&D) culture that had boomed into ubiquity in the late 80s and, for decades since, has held imagination/progress hostage. Love the wonderful pause imposed by that little word ‘curious’ there. Curiously loaded.
… rhetoric? Why all the praise for S. Jobs and vilification of Google? Not saying Jobs – but not Apple – was not a contributing figure in this Berners-Lee brainstorm, but he only helped create the tool Berners-Lee used. As a manager, not a techie. The guys that created Google, had they even reached puberty twenty years ago? Kissed their first girl? OK, that last may not have happened, yet. But, a bit less on the silly spite. Next thing you’ll be saying is “where was Obama?” or “the Tea Party was caught napping!” – both as relevant to the discussion. Less vitriol, please!
About those “other platforms” that required Berners-Lee’s invention to be whittled down, couldn’t have been Unix – that was the basis for the NeXT OS. Nor Linux, hadn’t been invented yet. So … Windows? Windows 3.1? All crucify Redmond, deserving as they are!
Actually in that timeframe it would have been the Amiga more than likely. Late 80s to mid 90s it was arguably the most powerful and capable computer available to mere mortals.
… I stand corrected. And I really, REALLY, should have known better. I owned one, at the time. And was rather geeky-proud of its CLI option.
Google: biting the hand that feds, stealing your personal info, stealing IP, whining since 1998.
I like it!
For the record, the web was postulated by Vannevar Bush in 1945. His description of it, entitled As We May Think, was published that year in the Atlantic magazine.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/3881/4/
That link goes to the fourth page (but the sixth chapter) of the article. The meat of the matter begins in the fourth paragraph.
I read it. It’s awesome to read of his ideas and watch the pictures fly by of what we now know as computers…. Visionary! He was probably thought crazy back then.
i distinctly remember that Al Gore invented the Internet. It was on Fox TV.
Too bad some of those Vannevar Bush genes didn’t carry on down the tree.
(the) “Next” (thing)says it all for Steve Jobs’ view of computers and how advanced Jobs is in most thing PC.
(the) “Next” (thing) says it all for Steve Jobs’ view of computers and how advanced Jobs is in most thing PC.