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What do Kobe Bryant and the World Wide Web have in common? They both turn 25 today!
Just to be clear, we’re talking about the Web here, not the Internet. The term ‘Internet’ is a common misnomer for ‘World Wide Web’ even though the two are not interchangeable. The Internet is the network that carries information between computer A and computer B. The Web, however, refers to the cyberspace within this network where webpages, browsers and documents are stored. Confusing, yes, but an important distinction.
It all began on September 2, 1969, when American engineer Leonard Kleinrock and his UCLA team sent data from his computer at the university all the way to Stanford University, California, marking the Internet’s ‘first breath’ and making the phrase “It’s a small world” even more potent.
This connection between two computers wasn’t enough for some excited researchers. It was English scientist Tim Berners-Lee who sought more than just a linear connection. Working at Swiss company CERN, Berners-Lee had an early vision of a globally connected system, and began development in the late 1980s.
In 1990, he created the “Hypertext Project,” which was intended to be a web of “hypertext documents” that browsers could view. The project came to fruition on August 23, 1991, with the world’s first webpage and web browser, “WorldWideWeb,” open and accessible to anyone in the public.
This new level of inter-connectivity was unprecedented. It was every adjective in the book: powerful, dangerous, exciting, revolutionary.
The distance between the United States and Sweden didn’t seem so great anymore. Suddenly, a free and open virtual space was made available to anyone with access to a computer.
With time, however, the questions the Web was meant to solve were soon met with even more. As geographic and linguistic barriers broke, so did our sense of security. The World Wide Web brought us together, but in the process opened up a motherlode of axiological questions that mankind has only just started to answer.
Of course, those at ENTITY pay homage to the visionaries Leonard Kleinrock and Tim-Berners Lee. The creation of this space has not only allowed women to amplify their voices, but to connect with each other all over the world – a feat impossible before the invention of the World Wide Web.
