This is where the Web was born!

Tim Berners-Lee is the primary inventor of the World Wide Web, making his first proposal on it in March 1989. He wrote the original Web software in 1990 and made it available on the Internet in 1991.

Web architect David Galbraith wrote to Berners-Lee, looking for the exact location where the Web was invented. "The reason I’m interested in this is that recognizing the exact places involved in the birth of the web is a celebration of knowledge itself rather than belief, opinion or allegiance, both politically and spiritually neutral and something that everyone can potentially enjoy and feel a part of," David wrote on his blog.

According to Berners-Lee:

I wrote the proposal, and developed the code in Building 31.

I was on the second (in the European sense) floor, if you come out of the elevator (a very slow freight elevator at the time anyway) and turn immediately right you would then walk into one of the two offices I inhabited. The two offices (which of course may have been rearranged since then) were different sizes: the one to the left (a gentle R turn out of the elevator) benefited from extra length as it was by neither staircase nor elevator.

The one to the right (or a sharp R turn out of the elevator) was shorter and the one I started in. I shared it for a long time with Claude Bizeau.

I think I wrote the memo there.

Since we should celebrate the people that matter like the inventor of the Web, this story is really worth telling. Thanks David for this great post!

 

25 years of .com domain names

This is a brief history of the Internet: Initiated by the ARPANET in 1969; the protocol used on the Internet called TCP/IP was developed in 1974; Domain Name System (DNS) designed by Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris, and Craig Partridge in 1983; a Massachusetts computer systems firm registered the first .com Internet domain name on March 15, 1985; and Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web in 1990. 

First 10 .com domains:

  • Symbolics.com - March 15, 1985
  • BBN.com - April 24, 1985
  • Think.com - May 24, 1985
  • MCC.com - July 11, 1985
  • DEC.com - Sept. 30, 1985
  • Northrop.com - Nov. 7, 1985
  • Serox.com - Jan. 9, 1986
  • SRI.com - Jan. 17, 1986
  • HP.com - March 3, 1986
  • Bellcore.com - March 5, 1986

[via SFGate]

Internet is up for Nobel Peace Prize

Finally, Internet, the first non-human to be nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, is among a record 237 individuals and organisations nominated. US President Barack Obama won last year's 10m Swedish kronor ($1.4m) prize.

However,

It is unclear who would accept the prize if the internet were to win.

[via BBC]

Newsweek in 1995: Why the Internet will fail?

Great find. A blog discovered an infamous Newsweek article [dating back to 1995] about the Internet "isn't, and will never be, nirvana".

Author Clifford Stoll wrote:

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
...
Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

[via Three Word Chant!]

 

The Internet nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Why not?

The Internet has been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize this year, according to some reports, following a petition by the Italian version of Wired Magazine, which cited the Internet’s contributions to “dialogue, debate and consensus through communication”.

What do you think? How does the Internet contribute to the world and peace?

How hard to be the futurists

Futurists, or futurologists, are those who speculate about the future. I  discovered some famous quotes on computer evolution; it shows that how difficult to imagine about the future of computer. 

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular Mechanics (1949) "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Business executive arguing against the PC (1977) "640K ought to be enough for anybody." --Bill Gates, referring to computer memory (1981)

Do you have some more?