Science Friday: The Web is 20

The web is 20! Long live the web!

Though it seems like a lifetime (and for some young fellets it actually is) the web is only 20 this month.

To celebrate the 20th birthday of the internet, we've got a roundup of some funky goings-on that can tell us a bit about our forgotten digital past, and our freaky online future.

Remember Arpanet, Netscape, Web 1.0, Web 2.0, the Semantic web, and the social web? Ah yes, we've seen Geocities crumble into sand, and the death of privacy...

Tim Berners-Lee, in the video above, is the man widely credited with inventing the World Wide Web.  Recently, he wrote in Scientific American:

"The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles.

The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.

If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want...

The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected."

Like Berners-Lee, we tend to think of the web on the whole as an unwritten future, waiting to be realised (or squandered).  But what about looking back?  The history of the web is being studied by loads of people and organisations like the Computer History Museum, which has an exhibit on the history of the internet (and which we've mentioned previously).

And the World Wide Web History Center, as well as the Web Science Trust (a joint MIT/ University of Southampton venture) are both trying to take a measured look at what's going on, how we got here, and where we're going.

You can even get down to basics and read "About the Internet" over at the Internet Society's website.

But you don't need anyone else to tell you the web has, and will, change everything.  Just this week Google demonstrated their Chrome Operating System, meaning they've gone from search engine, to web-based services, to operating system-- a distinctly opposite order to their old rival Microsoft.

And after years of fears that people would go down the rabbit hole of web-induced social isolation, research has shown that shy students who use facebook have better quality friendships.

And the web has certainly changed the flow of news. The aftershocks from the blog big bang, and the background radiation from the explosion in social media haven't cooled off yet, since the old "legitimate old-media VS frivolous new-media" quarrel is still going on. 

Only this week, Dwayne Brown, senior public affairs officer in the office of communications of the NASA Science Mission Directorate commented on the backlash against NASA's "hype" surrounding the Arsenic/astrobiology news conference, saying:

"It’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback. However, the statement was accurate.

The real issue is that the reporting world has changed because of the Internet/bloggers/social media, etc. A “buzz” term like ET will have anyone with a computer put out anything they want or feel. NASA DID NOT HYPE anything – others did. Credible media organizations have not questioned NASA about any text. Bloggers and social media have..."  (via embargowatch blog)

And bringing it all back home, the internet has become synonymous with big business and small startups alike in Ireland.  It's what the Guardian blogs about when they're writing about Dublin and not covering the banks.  The internet is central to groups like Python Ireland and Xcake that meet here at Science Gallery, and Enterprise Ireland is supporting Irish entrepreneurs this very week over at Le Web.

Happy 20th birthday, world wide web.  I bet you'd thought we'd forgotten!