30 years of the public World Wide Web

2023-05-08 07:49:00, Tech CNA

Illustrative photo

30 years ago a scientist in Geneva found a way for scientists to exchange information better with each other. This was the beginning of the digital world network, the World Wide Web.

The year 1989 was a year of great changes. One of them happened in the head of Tim Berners Lee. This physicist from the world-renowned CERN center in Geneva was not satisfied with the great chaos in the exchange of information between different institutions, different working groups and project groups. He found the solution by creating a worldwide digital information network, with which scientists would connect with each other.

The 34-year-old scientist wrote his concept in abbreviated form. "Vague but exciting" - "Vague but interesting", his boss commented on this memo. Apparently his idea was not very clear. Because no one dealt with him at first. But Berners-Lee continued to brainstorm and created the separate components of the world digital network, the World Wide Web: The so-called URLs for Web addresses, HTML, to describe Web pages, i.e. to program them those. Also, the HTTP technical protocol for links had to work, and finally the recipe for a Webbrowser had to be created. For the world public, this discovery could be seen exactly 30 years ago: On April 30, 1993, CERN scientists opened the world digital network, the World Wide Web. Thus began the triumphant march of the Internet.

Brockhaus gets dusty in the library

It must be explained to the 13-year-old girl today that at that time neither the Internet nor smartphones were known. Instead of shopping in the city center, as was done before, online shopping today fulfills every desire. The Brockhaus volumes gather dust in the library, because Wikipedia is basically the address that everyone who wants to get information about the revolution of 1789 or the discovery of the Internet looks for. Who is looking for an apartment, no longer browses the third or thirteenth page of the daily newspapers, but searches on Internet portals and finds enough advertisements to fill any type of newspaper. But the other side of the coin, for digital network connections, is disorientation, the great flow of information. On the net all people can publish and evaluate their views, ideas, products, goods and visions, and this was also the initial idea of ??the network and its operation. Donald Trump is a good example of this. All it took for him, among other things, was a Twitter account to gather a group of loyal followers, despite the misinformation, or perhaps because of it.

Search engines like Google or DuckDuckGo really help today to separate the wheat from the chaff in an endless field of information. However, large digital concerns such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are interesting global concerns, which mainly pursue profitable interests. They benefit by doing web structuring.

An idea that had nothing to do with Tim Berners-Lee. He could have patented his World Wide Web technology, but deliberately chose not to. The hunger for profits was at odds with his ideal of the free exchange of information.

The next level of Artificial Intelligence

The next step also within the Internet has just begun. It's about Artificial Intelligence (AI). A few months ago ChatGPT caused to open a new discussion. After 30 years of internet, the question is, is ChatGPT the future of the internet? "Being a language model based on AI, I cannot say for sure whether ChatGPT will be the future of the Internet, because the future of the Internet depends on many factors and is constantly transforming. However, there are some characteristics of ChatGPT and similar models of AI, which have the potential to influence the Internet and change it," the software says of itself when asked by Deutsche Welle. However, it is important to observe whether AI models also bring with them ethical challenges, such as data protection , transparency and responsibility.

Këtu hapi i ri i internetit lë për të dëshiruar. Sepse vërtet që ChatGPT mund të gjenerojë tekste që kanë lidhje me njëra tjetrën dhe tingëllojnë koherente sa i përket përmbajtjes, por burimet mbeten të pazbuluara. Ndryshe ka qenë puna me Tim Berners Lee 30 vjet më parë, ndryshe Sër Tim Berners-Lee. Faqja e parë e tij në internet ka pasur adresën: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

Ajo përmban edhe sot informacione bazë për World Wide Web: "Rrjeti WorldWideWeb (W3) është një nismë e gjerë hyper- mediatike për marrjen e informacioneve, nismë që synon krijimin e mundësive për të patur akses universal tek universi i madh i dokumenteve,” lexohet aty. Hypermedia vjen nga hypertekst dhe do të thotë tekste që kanë link, pra lidhje me tekste të tjera. Kështu krijohet një rrjet të dhënash, pa të cilin bota e sotme nuk do të mund të funksiononte.

Kush ka pyetje mund të fillojë një udhëtim në kohë. Në faqen e parë tëinternetit të publikuar në botë ekziston deri më sot një link për personat që marrin pjesë në projekt. Atje has Tim Berners-Lee, i cili ka marrë ndërkohë titull kalorsiak. Shkencëtari 34 vjeçar i atëhershëm ka pasur në CERN numrin e telefonit 3755, E-Mail: [email protected].

But Sir Tim Berners-Lee can no longer be found at CERN. Today he is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and since 2016 he has held a chair at the University of Oxford. To this day, he leads the consortium he created, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the World Wide Web Technical Standardization Organization. This is learned through a few clicks or expressing wishes with a smartphone on the Internet./ DW