Happy birthday – the internet
April 30, 1993, the European science agency CERN where Tim Berners-Lee worked released its W3 software into the public domain.
This text on a screen is taken for granted but the Internet, argues John Naughton, is one of the 20th century’s greatest inventions (“a force of unimaginable power”). He worried that the inventors have been overlooked, yet they “are like great poets or great mathematicians”. He writes about the beginnings at MIT in the 1930s with Vannavar Bush, Norbert Weiner and J. Licklider. (John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future, 1999). In the years since 1999 they are still not known to the public that use it daily.
Wonderful autumn weather, the greenhoods and jonquils are flowering.
- Last sunset of April, from Blue Poles
