It boggles the mind a little when you think about how young the Web truly is and how much the world has changed due to one innovation:
Almost precisely 17 years ago, a young British researcher from Cern, the European organisation for nuclear research, gave a presentation in Texas on a technology that was to change society dramatically. That same month, the Cern newsletter announced it to the world: it was called the World Wide Web.
It’s hard to imagine life today without it.
Click through to read the rest of the article, which is an interesting look at the “open web” versus command and control structures. Here’s a sample:
The web succeeded too quickly to be controlled. It conquered skepticism by existing. But imagine that we had had a chance squarely to consider its likely benefits and dangers. In place of what we have today I think we would have invented a tamer, more controlled web and a different underlying network on which it operates. We would restrict openness of access, decrease anonymity and limit the number of actions that a network participant could perform.
The benefits would be undeniable: it would cut down on spam, viruses and illicit peer-to-peer file sharing. But at the same time, it would undercut the iconoclastic technological, cultural and political potential that the web offers, the ability of a new technology, a new service to build on open networks and open protocols, without needing approval from regulators or entrenched market players, or even the owners of the web pages to which you link.