The World Wide Web

March 12, 1989 is celebrated as the birth of the World Wide Web, which makes it 25 years old, this year!  Most of us did not realize it, but there was an Internet, and the military and large industries were using it, to share information and communication before this. I realize, for example, airlines were using computers many, many years ago.

But Tim Berners-Lee http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2014/03/12/inventor-celebrates-reflects-on-world-wide-webs-25th-anniversary/ had the vision, and WWW was born!

This has so changed the world, that someone who was in a coma in 1988, and woke up in 2014, would not recognize the world.

I got on the web in the mid 1990's.  I remember watching the Today show in 1994, when the Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Winter_Olympics were being played. NBC http://www.nbc.com/ was touting the use of the Internet, specifically Prodigy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service) to show real time broadcasts of the Olympics.  The connections were slow, frequently interrupted, and the quality was not very good, but the concept was so exciting.

I bought my first computer about 1994 or 1995.  I did not know what all I could accomplish with it, but I had it.   I had a dial up connection with Prodigy that was slow, disconnected frequently and was unstable and unreliable.  After a while, I gave up.  But then, I used AOL http://www.aol.com/ and although it was dial up, the connections were more stable and reliable.

After that, the Internet and WWW soared! 

Now we have access at home, in WIFI hot spots, by cell phone, Tablets, IPods, IPhones, and so many other ways.  We can have wireless networks at home. There is Internet access in many public places, many commercial and municipal places, even rest stops on highways, sometimes for free, sometimes for a subscription service.

I feel lost when I do not have regular access to the Internet. 

When I was first connected, I liked being able to have email access to so many people who were also on the Internet.

But now, I most appreciate the ready access to information.  I grew up perusing the World Book Encyclopedia just because I liked looking at the pictures and reading the information. Well, being an information junkie, you can imagine how I feel about the Internet:  I can just look up whatever, whenever.

I do not have a smart phone.  I can live without one. But sometimes I think I would so enjoy the use of the smart phone to access information "on the go."

I think eventually I will graduate to a smart phone, because the World Wide Web is so accessible by a smart phone.

What an exciting time we live in!