| haha Spam spam spam my very first assignment for the Web-Tech module (14 more to come, it’s a weekly thingy) I put a very lame joke at the very end of the post hope the lecturer will get it |
Aha, it’s me again.
Since the previous posts have thoroughly covered
how internet came about during the 70’s,
I will kick start with the development
of modern internet, the World Wide Web (WWW).
There is one burning question which kept spinning in my mind:
Who has actually invented the Internet?
Just like how we equate
Bill Gates with Windows,
Steve Jobs with Apple and Mac,
who is (are) the father(s) of Internet?
Back in 1994, three years after the launch of WWW,
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) hosted
the very first WWW conference in Geneva.
Six great men were inducted into the WWW Hall of Fame,
as the recognition for their contribution to the modern internet.
| Name | Company | Contribution |
| Tim Berners-Lee | CERN | During late 80’s, in an attempt to collaborate on high-energy physics research, Tim invented HTTP and HTML. So Tim is responsible for the very existence of the WWW. |
Marc Andreessen | Netscape, formerly at NCSA | Marc is the project leader for NCSA Mosaic for X which really brought the Web into the mainstream. He introduced many extensions to HTML (i.e. inline graphics) that have made the internet what we are using today. |
Eric Bina | Netscape, formerly at NCSA | Similar to Marc, Eric worked for the Mosaic for X project and according to Marc, he is the one who came up with most of the actual code of the original program. |
Rob Hartill | Los Alamos National Lab, formerly at U. Wales College at Cardiff | Rob is the pioneer who show the world how interactive services can be implemented on the Web. He has always been a vocal and visionary proponent of the Web. He is best known as "the guy who did the Movie Database." |
Kevin Hughes | Honolulu C.C. | Working as a Web administrator, Kevin pioneered many web concepts, such as interactive graphics, campus information on the Web, and virtual museums. He has also designed most of those filetype icons that are built into the clients and servers now. |
Lou Montulli | Netscape, formerly at U. Kansas | Lou is the chief developer of Lynx who took a local CWIS program and put it on the Web. Since then, he has been a major voice in the direction of HTML and HTTP. |
As noted above, half of the Hall-of-Fame inductees
were actually the masterminds working in Netscape.
Netscape, does it ring a bell in your mind?
Those was the days of 56kb/s Dial Up internet
*beep beep beep…… disconnected*
Netscape was the dominant web browser during the early days,
but overtaken by Internet Explorer during the late 90’s.
the company went through a series of acquisition, reconstruction,
but sadly to say that, it officially got disbanded during 2008.
Today?
There is no longer a single market leader
dominating the browser market,
it is a collection of emerging browsers including
Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
Basically, I think studying the history of internet
doesn’t mean memorizing facts just like that you did
for your history during high school.
But it is more about seeing the whole picture,
where the trend and development is heading towards.
More importantly, the take-home point is
Move on Or Get Kicked Out,
there is no forever leader or winner,
that explains why iPad 2 is launched into the market so swiftly,
(oh man, but it is still lack of a USB port and Flash-supported browser.)
The war is getting faster and tougher, isn’t it?
When the WWW was first launched in the 1990’s
who would have imagined, internet on the go?
Let’s play a simple game,
Let’s imagine what’s next for the ten years down the road?
Our children would be wondering, what a LAN cable is.
I will be using my “outernet” phone to call up Bruno at Mars.
reference list:
http://botw.org/1994/awards/fame.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Conference_1#World_Wide_Web_Hall_of_Fame_Inductees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
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