“This World Wide Web you’re looking at right now wasn’t always something most people considered worth a second glance — let alone hours days weeks years of nonstop staring,” Eric Mack reports for CNET. “In fact, even some of the big info-nerds of the day ignored or dismissed it early on.”
“One of the earliest public demonstrations of the Web came back in 1991, when a man named Tim Berners-Lee sat at a table with a computer in a Texas hotel conference room, willing to give anyone with a few minutes to spare a personal introduction to his invention — a concept and a structure that would soon spark a worldwide information revolution,” Mack reports. “Every person in the room that day likely came to depend on this invention by the close of the 1990s, if not sooner. But when first confronted with the Web in that hotel, most simply said whatever the equivalent of ‘meh’ was at the time, and went in search of a drink.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s impossible to overstate how much the Web changed most people’s lives, certainly including ours. Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention dramatically changed our lives. Thank you, Tim!
Related articles:
World Wide Web creator (and Apple Mac user) Berners-Lee fears for Web’s future – November 3, 2006
The Web, Apple, Steve Jobs’ NeXT and the evolution of search – August 4, 2011
Apple Mac OS X forerunner used to create World Wide Web – September 29, 2004
Inventor of World Wide Web uses Apple PowerBook, Mac OS X, and Safari browser – September 23, 2003
TBL was back in Texas yesterday via Twitter at SXSW, asking the first question of Ed Snowden at an ACLU moderated interview.
BTW- Mr Berners-Lee agrees that Ed Snowden is a whistleblower and deserves such status.
Thanks for all the work, let’s not let the NSA screw it up.
I remember when Tim first mentioned WorldWideWeb.app on the comp.sys.next newsgroup. I downloaded it, looked at a couple of physics papers, and then forgot about it for a while, until OmniWeb came out.
-jcr
I thought Al-Jazeera Gore invented the information super highway.
Yes, Al-Jazeera Gore who is sitting on the Apple board does believe the he is the creator of the world wide web. He also believes in global warming. His wife left him and Apple should too. I have know idea of what he adds to the Apple board except for a clueless vote.
That’s a very humorous narrative. I don’t know whether you are ignorant or just disrespectful . The internet has many fathers. Al Gore sponsored the “High Performance Computing Act of 1991,” and, of course, was mocked for it. Conservatives knee jerk reaction is to make fun of things they don’t understand, so the inevitably make fun of most everything.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_and_Communication_Act_of_1991
In what way is disrespectful or ignorant? Al Gore is the main promoter of the Global Warming agenda. So he believes in that, or not? The fact is he has used twisted data and anecdotical evidence to support that theory. On purpose, who knows? That he sponsored the HPCA, sure. Does that equal to invent something?
‘He’ yup of course he is just a loner on this isn’t he, clearly ignoring the overwhelming bulk of scientists on the subject who contradict his thinking… Oh hang on a minute.
No, Al Gore invented the internet.
Most truly revolutionary inventions are not recognised for what they are when they are first shown. Most people judge new concepts by dwelling too much on what has gone before, without thinking what the new invention will allow in the future.
There are examples of this throughout history and there its no richer field of examples than in military history. Revolutionary inventions such as tanks, submarines, aircraft and missiles were all dismissed out of hand by senior military figures at the time, but went on to become hugely important.
Your not wrong there you see such short sighted ness on here often enough…. Followed by the rewriting of history usually.
…that history having been rewritten not by the commenters, but by a shadowy group of social engineers who conspire with industry policy analysts and psychologists to produce disinformation beneficial to the businesses of their employers, in forms designed to ride far on human clannishness, ideological lock-in, and gullibility. Such memes are powerful methods of mass thought control, employed effectively through the centuries in every culture and uprooted only through the agencies of war, natural disaster, or becoming so threadbare as to beguile only a child.
And we might as well acknowledge Apple’s forerunner to TBL’s invention, HyperCard (1987), which introduced many of the concepts he would turn into the WWW a few years later.
Oooh… HyperCard was fun. I can’t say I did anything *useful* with it, but it was fun. 🙂
Thre were many forerunners to the WWW. Compuserve, The Source, Telidon, The Qube System AOL, Genie.
I’m not minimizing his contribution but I don’t think it should be over blown either, like it was something that came out of the blue. It was more evolutionary than revolutionary.
As most inventions are, computers, TV, cars, to name just a few.
OT:Gore and the internet
The US news trackers are missing something on Al Gore’s quote. Snopes and others leave out other relevant news on the subject. The news of his so called invention came to light when he was either in Brazil or Argentina. I was in Asia. The international news there showed a clip of him saying that. My sister who lived in Tennessee saw the same clip as it made quick headlines on several Tennessee stations, since Gore was from there. Sis and I talked about it a couple of days after both of us saw that same clip.
No, it did not happen as it is mis-quoted in the US, but it did happen that way overseas. “I INVENTED the internet.” Can’t forget those words
Here again, is another place in time that Steve Jobs created something that another person used to change the world. HTTP was born and demoed on a NeXTcube computer that Steve Jobs made that was running the OS that later became OS X and now iOS. Also, 1955 was a very good year. Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955. Sir Tim Berners-Lee was born on June 8, 1955. McDonald’s was started in 1955. It catches my eye because I was born that year too.
I really miss Steve Jobs and can hardly imagine what else he would have done to change the world we and our kids and grand kids will live in if he lived a little longer. Every child will be taught about the many great American inventors like Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs.
My wife teaches 3rd grade in Texas, and last week she told me they had a lesson where they had to teach about Bill Gates as a great inventor. She did as required, but threw in her Steve Jobs twist to it all. Made me proud. 🙂
That would be a good story to report, though. Bill Gates is required teaching?! WHY? He would be nobody without Steve Jobs.
“He would be nobody without Steve Jobs.”
I wouldn’t say that or anything close to that.
Clearly TBL won’t be taught then on that basis… amongst thousands of others who helped make the modern World we live in.