The Web: 15 years old
updated 09:30 am EDT, Mon August 7, 2006
Web 15 Years Old
This week is famous for more than its computer introductions. On August 6th, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee posted a summary of the World Wide Web project to Usenet, describing it as an "easy but powerful global information system." The key feature was hypertext: the ability to create links within a document that take visitors to content elsewhere on the Internet. Of course, few people (even Berners-Lee) could have predicted the results at the time. Today, the Web and hypertext form the backbone of Internet communication, and even the most traditional forms of publishing are being revolutionized: news is no longer the domain of journalists, and encyclopedias now track the most recent trends in pop culture as well as more "serious" material. At the current rate, the next fifteen years of the Web should be at least as dramatic.
