Belated Happy Birthday, InterWeb!
Yesterday, scientists and other dignitaries gathered at CERN in Switzerland to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web. It was March 13, 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee first submitted his proposal for a hyptertext language (HTML), hypertransfer (HTTP), and names for pages (URL) to his bosses at CERN. He received a grant to pursue the work, and it was in December of the following year when Tim and his colleagues actually used a server to open up a Web page.
Who would have thought, from such modest beginnings, that the Web would be the ubiquitous, indispensable juggernaut that it is today? And who knows what seed of an idea that’s brewing in someone’s head today will revolutionize our world again in a few years.
Sometimes, technology scares me, because it seems to be growing an a faster rate than our intelligence and moral understanding of how to use it for the common good. But then again, it fascinates me, and I’m glad to be living in such exciting, rapidly changing times.
What do you think? Does rapidly advancing technology and all of the good/bad potential that comes with it, thrill you or frighten you? Let me know.
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