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The Web Is Ten Years OldAUGUST 6, 2001 · 15:20
On this day in 1991 a physics researcher in Switzerland posted a short note to a small discussion list about a new kind of document system. Ten years later the list has moved, the documents number in the billions, and the man has been given a knighthood and a job.
A BROWSER WINDOW. THIS IS A NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPH OF SOMETHING THAT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A PHOTOGRAPH.
( FILE PHOTO )
A BROWSER WINDOW. THIS IS A NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPH OF SOMETHING THAT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A PHOTOGRAPH.
LONDON, August 6 -- Ten years ago today a proposal entitled "Information Management: A Proposal" was posted to a discussion list with, by the standards of the current internet, a subscription list of about twenty people. The list is still running. The author, who was working at a particle physics laboratory at the time, has since been knighted.
The document specified hyperlinks. That was the innovation. Everything else — the browser, the search engine, the shop, the argument, the video — was somebody else's idea, applied to a system that had only ever been a way of referring to documents by name.
The web was designed to be read. It is, at time of writing, watched. Nobody involved considers this a failure of the original plan; it is more that the plan did not have a column for it.
Corrections: none so far. Published items are never corrected, they are replaced,
and the replacement keeps the original in the archive, where nobody will look for it.
COMMENTS (201) — showing the 10 that survived moderation
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TruthTeller69
Joined: Mar 2003 · Posts: 654
· Akron, OH · 2 minutes later
ten years. i remember when a page took four minutes and you had to sit there and watch the letters appear. we called that 'the internet' and we were right.
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ConcernedParent2004
Joined: Sep 2004 · Posts: 143
· the school pick-up line · an hour later
i was 11 in 1991. my dad set up a dial-up account so that i could email my cousin in australia. it took nine minutes. we did it every sunday.
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AuntMargeReadsThePaperLoudly
Joined: Oct 2001 · Posts: 820
· Akron, OH · same afternoon
the web was designed to be read and now there is a page that makes my computer fan run like a jet. i do not say this to be ungrateful. i say it to be accurate.
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SB
SirLoin_of_Beef
Joined: Sep 2002 · Posts: 1204
· Lincoln, NE · that evening
as someone who was on that list in 1991: it wasn't twenty people, it was four, and two of us were arguing about the font
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JT
just_passing_through
Joined: Dec 2003 · Posts: 34
· nowhere in particular · the next morning
the man who invented it gave a speech last year in which he apologised for the success. i thought that was very funny and very sad in equal measure.
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Hippie586
Joined: Jul 1998 · Posts: 1500
· Eugene, OR · the following day
we have had this computer since 1998 and it still works. you people will not buy this because of the new thing. i do not care. i am right.
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OldAndBald
Joined: Jan 1999 · Posts: 6677
· a recliner · two days later
OldAndBald wrote:
The Web Is Ten Years Old is it just me or did nobody else get an update when they said they were releasing one? mine says 1999 on it.
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internetwasbetter
Joined: Jul 2002 · Posts: 2440
· a modem · a week later
my parents bought a house in 1989 because the paper said prices would never go up. they were right. for 3 years.
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xX_BIG_SANDBOX_Xx
Joined: Mar 2002 · Posts: 1841
· Tacoma, WA · 2 minutes later
xX_BIG_SANDBOX_Xx wrote:
is it just me or did nobody else get an update when they said they were releasing one? mine says 1999 on it. i work in the industry (i do not want to say where) and everything in this article is correct, which is rare, and wrong about the timeline, which is also rare.
House rules, posted since the beginning and enforced by one person:
be the kind of commenter who would be tolerable in person. do not correct people's grammar
unless it is fun. no fonts larger than 11 pixels. this is not a newspaper. it is a
website.
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