Happy birthday WWW!

The Internet made small starts in the 1950s and 1960s with the development of computers. It started with communication between mainframe computers and terminals and then expanded to connections between computers and then early research into packet switching.

 

For most people, use of the Internet was not possible until the invention of the World Wide Web. That was the Big Bang of the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web at CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland. He made the first successful hypertext communication on December 25, 1990, an auspicious Christmas Day.

 

Some days I feel as though I live in the internet. My day starts when I stagger from the bedroom to the computer in the study to pick up my email. At that time of the day I am mainly interested in any new work that may have floated in during the night. Work may consist of small engineering tasks such as a short spec, or requests for business letters which often end “…or else” or regular articles I write. After a shower and breakfast I attend to those tasks. I also check the status of my bank account, read the news headlines from a couple of different papers, take a look at how the stock exchange is behaving and then I reply to emails. By then it’s lunch-time.     

An important part of the internet has become the VoIP "phone calls". I work from home and large part of every day is spent with “Skype” open to my remote office and long discussions take place on various business topics. In the evenings we often talk to children overseas at no charge at all.

 

I spend time browsing for goods on the internet. I don’t often buy there but I look at the goods and then go shopping in a store, knowing in advance what I want to buy. I do buy books and I have bought (and sold) odd items on eBay.

 

As far as information is concerned there is nothing that one cannot find on the internet, whether it is information about an object or a person. My company spends time checking prospective employees on social networking sites before any hire is finalized.

 

The internet is today the major source of all information about a company or a business and an allowance for the website maintenance has become a major part of company budgets.  

 

My address book and my personal phone book are on the web. I have a reminder service the let’s me know a day prior to a grandchild’s and other important birthdays. My appointments are stored on my computer diary and reminders come over the net. The last thing I do on my way to bed every night is to look at tomorrow’s appointments.

 

Much of the Internet focus is now moving to smart phones. I have friends who run their entire business from their phone. Of course backing everything up is critical.

 

The internet is the new world; well, not so new. Happy 21^st www!