Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web

The World Wide Web turns 20 this year. 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.
Four years later the Mosaic web browser was released, and the rest is history. In his written proposal he said, “We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.” Look how it all turned out. Sir Tim currently works as the head of the World Wide Web Consortium, where he continues to manage the new protocols and contributions which are extending his original vision in ways he never imagined. Click here read a longer article on Silicon Valley.com.
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.
An interesting side note, the Internet itself is 40 years old this year, having begun in 1969 as a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that was then known as the ARPAnet.

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About the Author:

I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com

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