[Nfbf-l] The Public Internet Turns 20 Today! (Article)

[Alan Dicey]

The Public Internet Turns 20 Today!
Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - by Seth Colaner
It's hard to believe, but 20 years ago yesterday, there was no publicly 
available World Wide Web. Sure, the Internet existed (and had for many 
years), but it wasn't until Tim Berners-Lee working at CERN, developed the 
software necessary to make the Web the information superhighway that it is 
today. (When's the last time you heard someone drag out that old 
"information superhighway" chestnut?)

The difference that the Web has made in the world is undeniable and cannot 
be overstated, but many of us alive today fit into a generational niche 
where we're old enough to remember trying to navigate life, school, work, 
and relationships without the Web but are young enough that when it debuted, 
we "got it" right away and quickly assimilated it and its uses into our 
daily lives.

For instance, "research" meant going to the actual, physical library. Google 
didn't exist yet, so if you didn't know some factoid, so you had to look it 
up in Encyclopedia Britannica. (And many families had entire volumes of the 
things on their bookshelves.) If you wanted to learn how to play the guitar, 
you had to go and find a human being at a shop somewhere to teach you during 
the day instead of just pulling up YouTube videos and learning on your own 
in the wee hours. If you wanted to buy something that your local store didn't 
carry, you either had to beg a merchant to special order it for you, find it 
a paper catalog, or just live without it. Selling a car? That's the 
newsprint Auto Trader for you, pal.
And on and on and on.

To commemorate this major birthday of the Web, let us hear about your first 
encounter with it. How old were you? What was the first website you remember 
visiting? What computer did you use to access it?


Via: Fox News | News Archive | Tags: Internet, CERN, Misc, World-Wide-Web, 
Tim-Berners-Lee

Subject: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The Public Internet Turns 20 Today!



http://hothardware.com/News/The-Public-Internet-Turns-20-Today/

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