25 Years of the Public Web

25th Anniversary of the WWW

2 weeks ago, 6th of August, 2016 marked the 25th anniversary of the first public availability of the World Wide Web aka Public Web. Given that we have just done some major updates to our website, we thought it would be fun to show what the original Website or Web page looked like. You can view it via this link to the CERN Website.  Yes, that is how it looked.  It’s not an error.

Snail Mail

It amazes how far we have come, from the early adopters among us to the guys we work with who were not even born then!  In 1992, I remember travelling and seeing an internet cafe for the first time in Kathmandu, Nepal. I was still writing letters home, and maybe I could afford to make a phone call home once a month, when i could find a phone kiosk that worked!  I understood the concept of email. I thought it quite wonderful! I never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that 24 years later, we would be so interconnected that my friends in the UK, France, Spain or Australia would be interacting with me in as near to real time as possible, with text, photographs and video.

The world I returned to was changing rapidly, meaning that I had to learn computers and fast! The company I worked for adopted technology early and we built a website to promote the business. We were ahead of the curve. How on earth businesses still exist today without a website is beyond me. If you know of one, let me know, we should talk!

Internet Archive

In the spirit of web and Internet related nostalgia, check out this archive tool for websites, and for a UK specific search try this website archive site to see what today’s popular websites looked like back in the ancient days of internet.

Tools – Fire – Language – Art – Complex Machines – Computers – Internet… Where do we go from here? Here’s hoping that the Internet continues to be used for more good than bad. While we wait, turn off your phone for a while,  take a walk on the beach or in the woods.  If you really try, it is liberating to disconnect, even if for just a short time.