WyzGuys Tech Talk

Yesterday marked the 28th anniversary of the World Wide Web protocol.  In 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who was a software consultant at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, proposed the concepts which became the World Wide Web. Prior to his proposal, the Internet existed almost solely as a research network for government and university science and engineering professionals. Sir Tim was concerned that saved research documents were becoming “lost in hyperspace,” and his proposal introduced the concepts of the domain name, which converted numerical Internet Protocol (IP) addresses into more easily remember and used names, such as www.wyzguys.com, for instance, the Domain Name System or DNS, which is a worldwide network of database servers which keep track of web based resources, and the hyperlink.  Because CERN listened to Berners-Lee, and decided to give it away to the world, rather than patent and monetize it, the WWW protocol supplanted another protocol called Gopher, which was invented at the University of Minnesota.  The lesson here is that not everything has to be for profit, or locked up, or owned. Not everything needs to be patented or copyrighted. This is why I am a big fan of Open Source and Creative Commons.  Some things we are doing could just be given away as a gift to the greater good. We can always just make more pie.