The World Wide Web @ 30
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| World Wide Web inventor Berners-Lee delivers a speech during an event marking 30 years of World Wide Web at the CERN in Meyrin (AFP) |
The World Wide Web celebrates its 30th Birthday this March
12th, affording an opportunity to assess how it has changed in the past 30
years
By Lydia O’Kane
Every day millions of people use the World Wide Web to
access information, digital photographs, music files, and videos, over the
Internet. But 30 years ago the web, as we know it, was just a proposal.
On 12th March 1989 British Scientist Tim Berners Lee, who
was working at Europe’s physics lab CERN, went to his boss with a pitch. The
rest, as they say, is history and the World Wide Web was born.
In 1993 it went public and an explosion of interest ensued
with companies, governments and people themselves designing their own websites
and accessing material.
Vatican.va
Even the Vatican was taking note. On March 30th 1997 the
Holy See’s website Vatican.va went public with the webpage of Vatican
Radio following sharp on its heels.
Pros and Cons
But despite the opportunities the World Wide Web has
provided, there is growing concern about how it is being misused. That unease
has come not least from its inventor Sir Tim Berners Lee.
Speaking at CERN to mark this resource that revolutionized
the world, he criticized the “commodification of personal data” and stressed
the importance of getting more people online.
“There’s only two things to do, one is get the other half
(of the world) online as quickly as possible…and the other is for the people
who are online…think about other aspects; privacy; think about owning control
of your own data.”
Looking to the future
So as the World Wide Web marks its 30th Birthday what does
the future hold?
For Berners Lee, it’s building a ‘Contract for the Web’
whereby clear norms, laws and standards are established that underpin it. The
inventor also remains optimistic about its long term prospects saying, “If we
give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed us. We
will have failed the web.”
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