These days, the World Wide Web, or “www” has become synonymous with the internet. The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertexts documents that include text, images, videos, and other multimedia. You navigate through these documents via hyperlinks you can access on the internet. Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist and former CERN employee, wrote a proposal for what would eventually become the World Wide Web in March, 1989. It was meant to be a more effective CERN communication system but Berners-Lee realized the concept could be implemented throughout the world. On August 7, 1991, Berners-Lee posted the project on the internet. The rest, as they say, is history.
In order to view a web page on the World Wide Web, you have to type a URL of the page you want into a web browser. Another way to do so is to follow a hyperlink to that page. After doing this, the web browser then starts a series of communication messages, behind the scenes, in order to grab the page you want and display it. In the 1990s, using a browser to view web pages—and to move from one web page to another through hyperlinks—came to be known as ‘browsing,’ ‘surfing the web’ or ‘navigating the web’.
Thanks to the internet’s omnipresence in our day-to-day lives, the World Wide Web has become an essential element of our social and work lives. Next time you have a drink, be sure to raise a glass to Berners-Lee, the internet’s unsung hero.
via sathiyam.tv
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