The World Wide Web (WWW) on Friday marked its 20th anniversary and its founders admitted there were bits of the phenomenon they did not like: advertising and “snooping.”
The creation of the Web by British computer software genius Tim Berners-Lee and other scientists at the European particle physics laboratory (CERN) paved the way for the Internet explosion that has changed our daily lives.
Berners-Lee and former colleagues such as Robert Cailliau, who originally set up the system to allow thousands of scientists around the world to swap, view and comment on their research, regardless of distance or computer system, took part in commemorations on Friday at the laboratory.
“Back then there were 26 Web servers. Now there are 10 to the power [of] 11 pages. That’s as many as the neurons in your brain,” said Berners-Lee, who still has an active hand in the Web’s development.
In March 1989, the young Berners-Lee handed his supervisor in Geneva a document entitled “Information Management: a proposal.”
The supervisor described it as “vague, but exciting” and gave it the go-ahead, although it took a good year or two to get off the ground and serve nuclear physicists in Europe initially.
Former CERN systems engineer Cailliau, who teamed up with Berners-Lee, said: “It was really in the air, something that had to happen sooner or later.”
They drew up the global hypertext language — which is behind the “http” on Web site addresses and the links between pages — and came up with the first Web browser in October 1990, which looks remarkably similar to the ones used today.
“Everything that people talk about today, blogs and so on, that’s what we were doing in 1990, there’s no difference. That’s how we started,” Cailliau told Swiss radio RSR.
The WWW technology was first made available for wider use on the Internet from 1991 after CERN was unable to ensure its development and the organization made a landmark decision two years later not to levy royalties.
“Without that, it would have died,” Berners-Lee said.
Cailliau still marvels at developments like Wikipedia that allow knowledge to be exchanged openly around the Web, but never imagined that search engines would take on the importance they have assumed today.
But the commercial development of the Web irritates some of the founders, who prize its open and universal nature.
“There are some things I don’t like at all, such as the fact that people have to live off advertising,” said Caillau, who preferred the idea of direct “micro payments” to information providers.
“And there’s the big problem of identity, of course, the trust between the person who is consulting and the person who provides the page, as well as the protection of children,” he said.
Berners-Lee, now a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and a computer science professor at Southampton University in Britain, still heads the World Wide Web Consortium that coordinates development of the Web.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) is reportedly making another pass at Nissan Motor Co, as the Japanese automaker's tie-up with Honda Motor Co falls apart. Nissan shares rose as much as 6 percent after Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported that Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) instructed former Nissan executive Jun Seki to connect with French carmaker Renault SA, which holds about 36 percent of Nissan’s stock. Hon Hai, the Taiwanese iPhone-maker also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), was exploring an investment or buyout of Nissan last year, but backed off in December after the Japanese carmaker penned a deal
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Three experts in the high technology industry have said that US President Donald Trump’s pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors is part of an effort to force Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to the negotiating table. In a speech to Republicans on Jan. 27, Trump said he intends to impose tariffs on Taiwan to bring chip production to the US. “The incentive is going to be they’re not going to want to pay a 25, 50 or even a 100 percent tax,” he said. Darson Chiu (邱達生), an economics professor at Taichung-based Tunghai University and director-general of
WASHINGTON POLICY: Tariffs of 10 percent or more and other new costs are tipped to hit shipments of small parcels, cutting export growth by 1.3 percentage points The decision by US President Donald Trump to ban Chinese companies from using a US tariff loophole would hit tens of billions of dollars of trade and reduce China’s economic growth this year, according to new estimates by economists at Nomura Holdings Inc. According to Nomura’s estimates, last year companies such as Shein (希音) and PDD Holdings Inc’s (拼多多控股) Temu shipped US$46 billion of small parcels to the US to take advantage of the rule that allows items with a declared value under US$800 to enter the US tariff-free. Tariffs of 10 percent or more and other new costs would slash such