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The fact that the World Wide Web turns 28 years old today either means Millennials are getting old, the Internet is young as hell in the grand scheme of things, or that so much has happened in those 28 years that it feels like we’ve been surfing the web for a lifetime. Which is low key kind of the case if you’re 28 and younger.
On August 6, 1991 British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website while working at a huge particle physics lab in Switzerland. Berners-Lee observed how tough it was to keep track of the projects and computer systems of the lab’s thousands of researchers, who were spread around the globe; so he created a solution.
Then by the end of 1990, Lee, using a Steve Jobs-designed NeXT computer, developed the key technologies that are the bedrock of the Web, including Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), for creating Web pages and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Thus the first ever website was born and the beginning of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet arrived on August 6, 1991.
Internet aside, the world was a very different place back then than it is now. Sure the web has many percs, like keeping people in the know, getting information instantly, and staying connected to people from all across the globe. However, people did actually communicate verbally back then. Looked folks in the eyes while walking down the street, instead of having their head down on the phones. SMH.
But different things for different generations I guess. Interestingly enough, the birth of the web wasn’t the most riveting thing about that year:
A gallon of gas in 1991 was just $1.12.
The average monthly rent for Americans was $495.00, compared to 2019 where the average American’s monthly rent is $1,085.
One of the most popular cases of Police Brutality was recorded on video camera in the case of Rodney King.
Whitney Houston owned the music charts.
George H.W. Bush was President.
And Donald Trump was exposed as his own PR guy.
Looks some things don’t change after all. SMH. At least we got Black Twitter out of all this. Thanks, Mr. Lee.
