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The web is 30 years old today

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Re: The web is 30 years old today

#31

Post by ghaff »

bsenftner wrote: post #12

The web became popular to mainstream culture a few years later. Although I'd been using arpnet for over a decade due to university access, I first encountered a "web browser" while working at Electronic Arts on the yet to be released 3D0 in '93 -'94. However, nobody cared diddly squat about "the web", it was empty or nonsense like usenet forums. We only cared about was DOWNLOADING DOOM! Id software released Doom, it…

I have a 1992 edition of O'Reilly's The Whole Internet. The WWW merits a very short chapter in the vein of there's this new fangled thing that came out of CERN. (But, really, let's talk about Gopher.)

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#33

Post by tannhaeuser »

dannyw wrote: post #10

I still find the web to be so beautiful. I can talk and meet people all around the world. I can stream hundreds of videos around every conceivable topic, in 4K60 resolution, on-demand. I can make a livelihood without ever stepping feet out of my home; and conversely, work from almost anywhere that'll give me a visa. The digitized information of our civilization is just one search away.

The web != all things transferred over TCP/IP.

Talk and meet? Skype, Zoom don't run on "the web" as such; need dedicated apps even if those may be based on Electron.

Video (Youtube) only has left Flash-based playback behind like 3 or 4 years ago; the resulting DRM required for video playback hasn't made purist happy, and resulted in a bitter controversy over TBL accepting interfaces to proprietary DRM into (proprietary) browsers.

Digitized information of our civilization being one search away hasn't been my experience at all in the last five years or so, with ads and ad-heavy sites being shoved onto you all the time. Even if it were, there's no strategy going forward to preserve that wealth for generations to come in times of monopolization.

As the first ever website demonstrates, the web originally was a means for easy self-publishing of digital text. Today, with platforms, verticals, network effects, the privacy minefield the web has become, and the complexity of the browsers left standing to support modern experiences as expected by consumers, it's questionable if that has actually been achieved.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#34

Post by freehunter »

bserge wrote: post #25
mhh__ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We? I think roughly around my year of birth (2001 - if that makes anyone feel old) is one of the last to grow up with "proper" computers rather than just iPads and phones.

On that note, it's always funny how kids try to use old hardware like a touchscreen

Heck I’m in my 30s and I do that sometimes. I just set up a new Mac after using an iPad Pro for a few months and the number of times I touched the screen is embarrassing.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#35

Post by tilt_error »

bserge wrote: post #25
mhh__ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We? I think roughly around my year of birth (2001 - if that makes anyone feel old) is one of the last to grow up with "proper" computers rather than just iPads and phones.

On that note, it's always funny how kids try to use old hardware like a touchscreen

Say no more :) https://youtu.be/hShY6xZWVGE

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#37

Post by freehunter »

bsenftner wrote: post #12

The web became popular to mainstream culture a few years later. Although I'd been using arpnet for over a decade due to university access, I first encountered a "web browser" while working at Electronic Arts on the yet to be released 3D0 in '93 -'94. However, nobody cared diddly squat about "the web", it was empty or nonsense like usenet forums. We only cared about was DOWNLOADING DOOM! Id software released Doom, it…

My dad co-owned a small company in the early 90s and they just got new computers but he convinced the rest of the owners that they needed to invest in serial network equipment “to share files”. In reality they ended up playing multiplayer Doom with it.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#39

Post by smarx007 »

tobr wrote: post #3

I can't see anything on the linked page to suggest that the web was "born" 30 years ago today (i.e. 20 December 1990). On the contrary, it says it was invented in 1989. Wikipedia[1] lists the official release date of the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, as 25 December 1990. Tim Berners-Lee has said that the first version was "whimsically dated 901225 although I was NOT working on Christmas Day -- it was prepared some…

CERN celebrated the 30th anniversary on 2019-03-12 https://home.cern/events/web30, but I do agree that celebrating the day the first (public) web server went up is a bit more symbolic than the day the proposal was submitted.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#40

Post by bserge »

tilt_error wrote: post #35
bserge wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, it's always funny how kids try to use old hardware like a touchscreen

Say no more :) https://youtu.be/hShY6xZWVGE

Ha, voice control was all the rage for a while... before everyone realized it's just impractical
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