The World Wide Web is Twenty Years Old – An Industrial Technology for All

In many posts in this blog I highlight technologies from the commercial space that can be used by the industrial user. The World Wide Web which is 20 years old this year was conceived by Tim Berners-Lee and is one example of an industrial technology that the commercial and private world adopted for their use.

It came about by Tim Berners-Lee writing a paper called "Information Management : a Proposal" which his managers found to be somewhat vague. Despite this fact, CERN decided to test out the concept and in 1991, an early version of the system was launched to the high energy physics community which included the simple browser, web server software and a library.

By offering it free the barriers to adoption were low. The other driving force was the growing presence of PCs in the 90s and mobile devices in post-millennium that offered access through a web browser. In this article the author distinguishes between the internet which is the basic infrastructure using IP addresses to connect computers and servers and the web which is the layer of software on top called a browser that lets users interface with the web to share information and documents.

This all raises the question, what other technologies could be provided by the industrial space for the commercial?

Best regards,
Hall T.