Happy 20th Anniversary, Our beloved Web turned 20

The WWW is growing up -- a teenager no more. Our beloved Web turned 20 on Friday the 13th of March

The late Eighties! Mike and the Mechanics were at the top of the charts, George Bush, Senior had just become President of the US, and a CERN contractor by the name of Tim Berners-Lee was busy writing a little paper entitled Information Management: A Proposal. In it he described a way to simplify the sharing of information among people in different locations. He gave it to his manager, Mike Sendall, who thought it was "vague, but exciting."

Over the following year, Tim and his colleague, Robert Cailliau, refined the idea and updated the proposal. It described a concept called a “WorldWideWeb” -- a simple interface for browsing large quantities of information, using hypertext to link documents. Within just a few years it had grown well beyond CERN and the academic realm, and public use of the Internet exploded thanks to this new, more intuitive interface.

Why the history lesson? Because the date on Tim Berners-Lee's first paper, arguably the birth of the Web, was March 13th, 1989. That's twenty years ago last Friday -- and to me, that's a reason to celebrate!

It's amazing to think about how much the Web's developed since then. We've seen:

* some of the earliest browsers, such as the WorldWideWeb Browser, Cello, and Mosaic
* early debates about the semantic meaning of HTML (where did we go wrong?)
* the first appearance of JavaScript and its amazing new features
* the first steps into ecommerce
* the browser wars (Netscape Now!)
* the dot-com bubble and its subsequent implosion
* some new up-and-comer called Google
* the first blogs
* YouTube
* the beginnings of the social web, with sites like Orkut and Friendster
* the mobile web on phones, handhelds, and tiny laptops

It's hard to imagine now what life would be like without the Web. Even more obscure to me is this: what would we all be doing if there were no Web, and thus no Web developers, managers, sysadmins, writers, or designers? Twenty years ago I was ---- years old and daydreamed. None of my friends and family -- including me -- would have predicted that my career would be what it is right now.

what do you think the web will become in the next 20 Years

quadrillo nice post. Question: How do we apply this within the Nigerian context. In particular it would be nice if you could address this as it relates to lack of basic infrastructure, lack of access to a majority and businesses that don't have websites among others.

Let's step it up a notch

@quadrillo
That is thoughtful of u. i will give ur post the best post of the year on this Webmaster forum because there is no webmaster without the thinking of Tim.
thumbs up. thet is very informative.