The Internet Turns 16

Posted on August 8, 2007 by C Johnson
Industry, Tech

Yesterday, the Internet turned the big 16. In human years, that’s just old enough to get a provisional driver’s license, some countries will even let you drink legally, and you also get the green light to be extraordinarily obnoxious. But unlike most 16 year-olds, the Internet has spent its formative years, not leaching off mum and dad, but making enormous contributions to society. Sure it can be a petulant pain in the backside, but the Internet has done more to change the world we live in during the past sixteen years, for better or for worse, than any other invention in recent memory. Revolutionizing the way we live our lives in nearly every aspect: the way we work, the way we talk, how we shop, organize, communicate and socialize.

There are a number of debates as to the Internet’s actual birth date, one of the most commonly cited being 24 years ago in 1983 when the switch was made from Network Control Protocol to Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. (As Wired.com oh so succinctly put it, the change was “one small switch for man, but one giant switch for mankind.com.”)

But the Internet as you and I know and love/hate it—URLs and HTML—was made public sixteen years ago yesterday, the result of a research project that had been in the works by software developer Tim Berners-Lee since 1980. Lee wove the web—invented Hypertext language, designed URLs, created a little something known as HTTP and, in 1991, debuted the first public world wide web page. From that day, we’ve been through everything from Mosaic and Prodigy to MySpace and YouTube.

The possibilities of the next 16 years truly do make the mind reel…

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