A few days ago, the 25th anniversary of the first ever webpage going live occurred and it got me thinking, in a non-existential way. While 25 years doesn't seem like a long time, in the digital world it's several lifetimes of work. And while I don't remember the event, as I was still around playing with my Nintendo, it's still an important marker in the history of that which is the web.
So today's let's talk about those past 25 years, and just how much the web has changed, if any. And whether it's going towards a positive place of distributed knowledge, or a deep dark hole of diluted and fractured knowledge. Or possibly a combination of both.
The Early Beginnings
In 1989, a scientist at CERN by the name of Tim Berners-Lee sketched up a proposal that he pitched to his supervisor for a distributed information system that they could use to preserve and transfer data. His supervisor loved the idea, jotting down that it was "vague but exciting..." on top of the proposal, and so they began work on what would become known as the World Wide Web. Less than a year later, they had a proof of concept and a functional prototype. And that website can still be seen to this day. And to be fair, there is still alot of good info there.
It is very data oriented and very link oriented. It's almost like an early Wikipedia or a Craigslist in its simplicity and in its usefulness. Just follow a few of the links around, and you can feel how important of a project this was and still is. There are even some great ideas there about annotations and versioning that unfortunately aren't a part of the standard today.
Let's take a minute to appreciate the source that started it all as well. All CAPS, no classes yet, no double quotes for name values, but double quotes for href values and everything is static. But it was so simple to implement back then. And websites followed this standard for years and years. Which is why you can still find sites with all caps and tables everywhere. Sure, they're a nuisance, but they're also historic in a way.
Where It Went
The initial concept for the World Wide Web is an amazing one. A network of different interconnected nodes that you could leap from with a single click. It was suppose to prevent information loss and improve intercommunication on a whole different level. And for the most part, it did just that. The more time went on, the more companies started to embrace it, and it began to reach out into the public sector more and more. Now initially, this was suppose to be an idea focused on laboratories and corporations. A way for data to persist and travel even when employees moved on to different jobs and such. Of course, like most things, once someone figures out how to make money off of a product, everyone will follow. And the same is true for the internet.
If you look at the source of a webpage today, a good portion of it will resolve around tracking user activity and displaying ads. And while links are still prevalent, they more or less point to nodes that are more likely to have a conversion, and less likely to point to something relevant. Most web pages feature sponsored content nowadays and every other article that you read will contradict that sponsored content. And that is what I meant earlier by fractured knowledge, instead of distributed knowledge.
Science And Technology
In the science and research realm however, fortunately, not too much has changed from those days at CERN. From what I recall in my college years, most professors kept their research and notes at university servers. Most had little to no styling, no ads, no tracking, just data and research. And if you look at medical research sites, like I enjoy doing in my spare time, you'll notice the exact same. The WHO's online publication site iris, hosts tens of thousands of research articles for example. Before the web, this research essentially was just kept in one location. You couldn't search, analyze or edit said content. It's also very remnant of those early websites in that its 90% content with 10% links to other related pieces of information.
Unfortunately, however, this is probably the smallest part of the internet nowadays. And while I couldn't find any real numbers, just based on Alexa rank and estimated traffic, many YouTubers get much more traffic daily than all of these research sites combined. But regardless of that, they're still going strong. People are still learning, writing and sharing on the interwebs every single day even without any monetary value attached to it.
Where It's Going
While the focus of the internet nowadays ins't really for distributed knowledge, it doesn't stop those looking to do so from doing it. Any new specifications and technologies released nowadays however, more or less have to do with media distribution. Making it easier and simpler for higher quality media to play on our browsers and such. And while this isn't a bad thing at all, it hasn't quite had the impact that the web had 25 years ago.
There's the part of the web that we openly see everyday, with eye catching news stories and "You won't believe who just did what in the where" titles. And there's the part of the web that hasn't changed in 2 decades and that's still keeping that original dream alive and well.
Walter Guevara is a software engineer, startup founder and currently teaches programming for a coding bootcamp. He is currently building things that don't yet exist.
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