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The web is 30 years old today

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Re: The web is 30 years old today

#51

Post by spacedcowboy »

When I set up my first website, you had to email CERN to be put on a list of websites around the world, that was published on their website...

I think it was about the 60th (I forget the exact number, it was a long time ago :) website in the UK, serving the “needs” of (ok, playing with tech for) the image processing group in Kings College London’s physics dept while doing my PhD.

The server ran on my desktop DECstation 3100, a 16MHz R2000 with a 1024x864 1-bit display named asterix.ph.kcl.ac.uk - Yeah, 1-bit. In the image-processing dept... still, it was more than 10x faster than the microvax that served the rest of the dept!

It’s kind of amazing to me, having lived through all the change, that a modern Arm SOC like the $5 Pi-0 would blow away that at-the-time (1989) high-end workstation, in every respect. In the dust.

In comparison, the first computer I ever got was the ZX81 (in 1981, so about 8 years earlier) and it had 1K of RAM, came as components that I soldered to the motherboard (I was 11 at the time, soldering was old-hat) and I was more interested in the black-and-white, dial-tuned, portable TV that I could have in my bedroom that came with it :) But to go from that to the DEC 3100 in such a short time was also massive progress.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#52

Post by diggan »

benbristow wrote: post #44
diggan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you overall, but the internet never been more geofenced than what we see today. Tons of content is no longer available to me as I live in the EU and apparently american companies care so much about my privacy that I can no longer access their websites. Growing up in the 90s, I remember a internet that was without geographical limitations and people doing things for love of that thing, not the perversion…

Grab a VPN and that won't be a problem anymore.

Sure, that does solve the problem for me as an individual but what about the rest of the people who don't understand proxies and wouldn't even be able to install one with the instructions?

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#53

Post by ghaff »

diggan wrote: post #50
ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the EU has passed regulations and if I'm a business and don't make money from you and it takes money/effort to even verify whether I'm compliant with those regulations (or if I simply consider them a risk), nothing personal, but I'm going to geoblock you. That's not a comment on whether the regulations are good or bad. It's just that, as a business, if you're not a profitable customer or potential customer, I d…

Yeah, that makes sense. My point is just that, the web is all business now, and people use that to justify their decisions. It didn't use to be that way, but because of the commercialisation of the internet, we're now here, which means tons of people no longer has access to information they would if the web was still focusing on being open.

It's not all business although commercial activity, or would-be commercial activity, certainly dominates. But a lot of that commercial activity, e.g. most newspapers, simply wasn't online at all at first. And the pioneers in that space found that they had to find ways of monetizing if they were to remain in business. (Which most of them weren't really able to do so they went out of business or radically downsized.) I'd argue that, overall, people have access to way more information than they did 10-20 years ago even if some of that information is paywalled, geoblocked, or in some other form of walled garden.

The Internet (including the Web) of the mid to late-ish 90s may have been refreshingly non-commercial and open relative to today but it was also much smaller.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#54

Post by tylerjwilk00 »

breck wrote: post #45
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.

Right? It's still so amazing. I would say more amazing than ever (thanks to new trailblazers like Alexandra Elbakyan). I was just a kid growing up far removed from the information and happenings of the rest of the world and the web was this magical new thing that connected me to it. It was a bit of a firehose at first (well, I guess still is), but I loved it. The only difference between now and then is that now I kno…

Ditto. Grew up in the middle of nowhere. The Web gave me access to libraries of information and the work of great minds. It sparked my interest in computers and put me on the career I'm still on to this day. Through other Internet technologies (IRC,IM) I was able meet and interact with other like minded individuals. It's still fascinating but some of the original magic does seem lost but perhaps it's just nostalgia.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#55

Post by judge2020 »

ghaff wrote: post #23
diggan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you overall, but the internet never been more geofenced than what we see today. Tons of content is no longer available to me as I live in the EU and apparently american companies care so much about my privacy that I can no longer access their websites. Growing up in the 90s, I remember a internet that was without geographical limitations and people doing things for love of that thing, not the perversion…

Well, the EU has passed regulations and if I'm a business and don't make money from you and it takes money/effort to even verify whether I'm compliant with those regulations (or if I simply consider them a risk), nothing personal, but I'm going to geoblock you. That's not a comment on whether the regulations are good or bad. It's just that, as a business, if you're not a profitable customer or potential customer, I d…

Exactly. People seem to forget that the web is just a way to instantly communicate with other humans, most of whom don’t follow the same exact vision for how things should be ran and monetized. Widespread commerce and monetization of previously 100% open (or previously non-existent) information was only a matter of time once monster-in-the-middle attacks were solved with SSL.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#56

Post by rurban »

I doubt that this was the first website and webserver. Just the first HTTP server.

Previously GOPHER did exist, also with multimedia extensions to view videos and images, and other/better types of webservers, eg. Microcosm, Memex, Xandru, Dexter or esp. Hyper-G via the HTP protocol (Hyper Text Protocol) or just via emacs. Hyper-G servers had link consistency and clients had embedded search. But worse and free was better, Hyper-G and Microcosm were proprietary.

First Hyper-G installation around 1989 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220349551_The_Hyper...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282504095_Analysis_...

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#57

Post by sneak »

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.

> I can stream hundreds of videos around every conceivable topic, in 4K60 resolution, on-demand.

There are tons of entirely legal topics for which this statement is simply not true. Censorship is rampant on the modern web.

Of course, one is free to self-host, but there are special bandwidth deals for the 4K60 platforms that allow them to stream to millions of users, something you won't be permitted to do from the internet connection you have presently.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#58

Post by ghaff »

rurban wrote: post #56

I doubt that this was the first website and webserver. Just the first HTTP server. Previously GOPHER did exist, also with multimedia extensions to view videos and images, and other/better types of webservers, eg. Microcosm, Memex, Xandru, Dexter or esp. Hyper-G via the HTP protocol (Hyper Text Protocol) or just via emacs. Hyper-G servers had link consistency and clients had embedded search. But worse and free was bet…

By definition, the "web" is HTTP. Of course there were files hosted on servers prior to the WWW. Including direct predecessors such as, as you mention, Gopher. But they weren't the web.

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#59

Post by hunter2_ »

rurban wrote: post #56

I doubt that this was the first website and webserver. Just the first HTTP server. Previously GOPHER did exist, also with multimedia extensions to view videos and images, and other/better types of webservers, eg. Microcosm, Memex, Xandru, Dexter or esp. Hyper-G via the HTP protocol (Hyper Text Protocol) or just via emacs. Hyper-G servers had link consistency and clients had embedded search. But worse and free was bet…

I've always equated "web" with HTTP, but is it correct to define it more broadly, inclusive of things like GOPHER? Basically anything with hypertext?

Re: The web is 30 years old today

#60

Post by rurban »

ghaff wrote: post #58
rurban wrote: post #56

I doubt that this was the first website and webserver. Just the first HTTP server. Previously GOPHER did exist, also with multimedia extensions to view videos and images, and other/better types of webservers, eg. Microcosm, Memex, Xandru, Dexter or esp. Hyper-G via the HTP protocol (Hyper Text Protocol) or just via emacs. Hyper-G servers had link consistency and clients had embedded search. But worse and free was bet…

By definition, the "web" is HTTP. Of course there were files hosted on servers prior to the WWW. Including direct predecessors such as, as you mention, Gopher. But they weren't the web.

Nope, you mix that up with WWW.

I browsed the web before CERN published their HTTP server and clients. E.g. the newsgroups were called Internet long before. The Web was the abbrevation of Internet.

WWW was the multimedia enriched variant of the web, with a XML format and a state-less server. State-less on purpose, in constrast to the existing stateful servers those days, with proper login and the server keeping each clients state. This didn't scale, so the worse and simplier WWW technology succeeded. Cookies had to be invented to catch up.

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