March 12, 1989, marked the dawn of a new age. Officially recorded as the birthday of the World-Wide Web (a formative step behind the internet as we know it) Tim Berners-Lee changed the game when he first pitched the idea. Now, the ubiquitous Google has taken a moment to commemorate the occasion via Doodle, as they have been known to do during historical milestones. Should you head over to the Google homepage, you can see their homage come alive, likely to spawn fits of nostalgia for older fans.
Image via Google
Complete with an old, dial-up modem, and those frustrating yet somewhat endearing slow-download times, the picture evokes memories of a simpler time. A time when downloading music took the better part of an hour. Movies, for the more daring digital adventurer, required a full-fledged time commitment, dinner plans be damned. Yet nostalgic feelings aside, Google wants the distinction to be clear: the internet and the world-wide-web are not the same things. The website shared a blog post detailing the differences, which you can read below:
"Not to be confused with the internet, which had been evolving since the 1960s, the World Wide Web is an online application built upon innovations like HTML language, URL “addresses,” and hypertext transfer protocol, or HTTP. The Web has also become a decentralized community, founded on principles of universality, consensus, and bottom-up design."
Take a moment to reflect on how far technology has come, and wish a happy birthday to the World Wide Web.
