World Wide Web

A lot has changed in 22 years.

On August 6, 1991, the first-ever website was born. It was the creation of Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist in charge of the massive project of creating the World Wide Web. That first website was simple by our modern standards: it showed an outline of his project, and some tips to readers on how to make their own web pages. (The website address? http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html -- still in use today.)

To clarify: the world wide web and the Internet are two separate entities. The Internet's been around since the 1960s, and simply refers to computers and networks interconnected with each other. The World Wide Web, on the other hand, is merely one service that the Internet offers -- but it's the tool that most of us use in order to access the Internet's text, pictures, sounds, and video. (If you're interested, you can read more about the technical differences between the two here.)

So unless you're a tech whiz, you use the World Wide Web pretty much exclusively when you access the internet. And we 21-century sorts use the internet a lot. 

Here's some usage facts to try to wrap your mind around:

-- In 2012, there were 2.4 billion Internet users around the world.

-- 244 million of those users are in America. (That's 78% of America's total population.)

-- Over one billion people have a Facebook account.

-- More than 500 million personal photos are uploaded to the Internet every day (using such websites as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Flickr).

-- 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

-- 15% of all internet traffic is coming from mobile devices, such as cell phones.

Computers and the Internet have helped usher in the modern age, but the World Wide Web has changed our everyday life. (Probably, it's arguable, for better and for worse.)

It's changed how we watch TV, view movies, and listen to music. (How we read books is probably next on the list.) It's changed how we learn, how we shop, and how we socialize. It's changed how we get our news and how we spend our time.

Most of all, it's put a world of information directly at our fingertips. Going to www.google.com and typing in a topic or a question has become such a standard method of finding answers that it's become a verb: "Just Google it!" However, whether or not such answers are coming from trustworthy sources can be another matter entirely. (Always remember, however, that we librarians are here to help sort out such matters!)

Computers have been used as tools for decades. But the last 22 years have seen them entirely alter our daily way of life. It remains to be seen what the lasting effect of the World Wide Web will be on our society -- but whatever happens, it's all but guaranteed that the world will never be the same.

All About the World Wide Web:

-- History of the Web: from Tim Berners-Lee's organization, the World Wide Web Foundation.

-- Internet Timeline: includes the introduction of the World Wide Web!

-- The Single Most Valuable Document: The World Wide Web was almost ... patented. Check out this article from NPR for more!

-- What 14 Popular Websites Used to Look Like: Websites looked a lot different in the 90s.



Website Lists:

-- Recommended Websites: MPL's own list of trustworthy research and reference websites.

-- 50 Websites: Time's list of the websites that make the World Wide Web great.

-- 2013's Most Addictive Websites: A highly subjective -- but still plenty fun -- list.

-- Great Websites for Kids: Recommended by the American Librarian Association.

-- 20 Really Cool Websites to Help Cure Boredom: Time-wasting in its most fun sense!

-- The Useless Web: Having trouble finding a thoroughly useless website?  Here you go!



-- Post by Ms. B