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posted by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the sir-interwebz dept.

Tim Berners-Lee's first World Wide Web page flickered to life at CERN on December 20th, 1990:

The inaugural page wasn't truly public when it went live at CERN on December 20th, 1990 (that wouldn't happen until August 1991), and it wasn't much more than an explanation of how the hypertext-based project worked. However, it's safe to say that this plain page laid the groundwork for much of the internet as you know it -- even now, you probably know one or two people who still think the web is the internet.

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.


Original Submission

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee Talks about the Web Again 43 comments

Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave an interview with radio station WBUR about the state of the Web and its future:

Berners-Lee initially imagined the web as a beautiful platform that could help us overcome national and cultural boundaries. He envisioned it would break down silos, but many people today believe the web has created silos.

And he still largely sees the potential of the web, but the web has not turned out to be the complete cyber Utopian dream he had hoped. He's particularly worried about the dark side of social media — places where he says anonymity is being used by "misogynist bullies, by nasty people who just get a kick out of being nasty."

He also identified personal data privacy, the spread of misinformation, and a lack of transparency in online political advertising as major problems with the current Web in a letter marking the World Wide Web's 28th birthday last month.

Previously: World Wide Web Turns 25 years Old
Tim Berners-Lee Proposes an Online Magna Carta
Berners-Lee on HTML 5: If It's Not on the Web, It Doesn't Exist
The First Website Went Online 25 Years Ago
Berners-Lee: World Wide Web is Spy Net
Tim Berners-Lee Just Gave us an Opening to Stop DRM in Web Standards


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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:48AM (#280027)

    Ah, the good ol' days before annoying rotting-toenail ads and "clever" JavaScript gizmos that slide, pop, wiggle, fade, dance, crash, and infect your bank.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:51AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:51AM (#280028)

    I still remember the first time I ordered something off the web. It was hothothot.com around 92/93. They sold hot sauces, this was back before you could find anything hotter than Tabasco anywhere. To get free shipping I ordered 3 things, one of which was the completely unknown Sriracha hot sauce. The web site unfortunately didn't last long, but I go through about 3 bottles of Sriracha a year (as opposed to less than 1 a year of ketchup).

    My hot sauce lasted about a year, went back to the website to reorder and they were sadly 404'd.

     

    --
    It's just a fact of life that people with brains the size of grapes have mouths the size of watermelons. -- Aunty Acid
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:36PM (#280396)

      Is there anything at that site(that isn't porn) now?

  • (Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday December 23 2015, @02:14AM

    by fliptop (1666) on Wednesday December 23 2015, @02:14AM (#280035) Journal

    I used lynx to read stuff back in those days, but I remember looking for pictures of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter. That was the 1st image I viewed in a Web browser (back then, Mosaic).

    --
    Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 23 2015, @02:37PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday December 23 2015, @02:37PM (#280211) Journal

      Haha I used Lynx because I couldn't handle the flashing primary colors and blaring sounds on Mosaic. I still do once in a while, because I get sick of the Javascript/AJAX crap and just want the text.

      Love your sig, BTW

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday December 23 2015, @03:39AM

    by Marand (1081) on Wednesday December 23 2015, @03:39AM (#280056) Journal

    My first experience with websites was with either IE3 or whatever version of Netscape Navigator was current at the time; I had both thanks to the software CD that my dialup ISP supplied and used both, but don't remember which one I used first. Prior to that horrible little Windows 95 system I'd never had the option to get online.

    That said, I started using Linux not long after, so I also spent plenty of time on the console with lynx. I later switched from lynx to links2 and elinks, both of which I still use sometimes specifically because they can't handle all the "modern" browser bullshit.

    Posted this from elinks because it seemed like a fitting tribute.

    • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday December 23 2015, @03:52AM

      by Marand (1081) on Wednesday December 23 2015, @03:52AM (#280062) Journal

      Oh, before I forget, elinks complains that the fragment "#post_comment" doesn't exist after submitting a comment. Otherwise the process worked reasonably well. Only other problem I noticed at a glance is that headlines on the front page are completely unreadable when TERM is set to anything capable of more than 16 colours (such as xterm-256color) because the headlines show as black-on-dark-blue.

      Still, it was mostly painless, unlike links2 and lynx. Links2 wouldn't let me login and lynx was having problems with viewing the site over https. Oddly, I was eventually able to get links2 to login, but only if I did it from the comment posting area. As soon as I left that and went back to summaries it lost the login and I was back to being AC.

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday December 23 2015, @04:09PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday December 23 2015, @04:09PM (#280239) Homepage

    I want the World Wide Web back.

    HTML with hyperlinks and CONTENT. Sure it was ugly with BLINK tags and such, but look at what we have today:

    Facebook and a few other giant social media sites. A few dozen clickbait "news" sites that just recycle each other's not-news sensationalist articles back and forth. Web apps, JavaScript, tracking, and ads galore.

    The World Wide Web is long gone. All we have are a few central warehouses distributing daily Soma rations to the masses.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:56PM (#280383)

      A small sample of sites that have original & interesting content:

      I never find Dr. Schestowitz and company agreeing with corporate media's agenda or mindlessly echoing their propaganda.
      TechRights [techrights.org]

      I don't find worker-centric sites regurgitating Lamestream Media's nonsense.
      Their content will give you "The rest of the story" as a now-dead Conservative would say.
      A particularly good one is the World Socialist Web Site. [wsws.org]

      Wanna find out just how untruthful|biased|lazy Lamestream Media's coverage of a story is?
      Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting [fair.org]
      Media Matters For America [mediamatters.org]

      There's plenty of interesting content out there.
      It's up to you, however, to get off your ass and find it.
      TechRights' quasi-daily news digest [google.com] is full of stories and sources.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:40PM (#280400)

      THIS!