With the idea of bringing the globe under one roof, one of the biggest ever inventions of all time- the World Wide Web- is celebrating its 30 years of its profound presence. Tim Berners, the English Scientist the man who cracked the idea of WWW in 1989 zeroed-in on this concept based upon the principle of Universality. In November 1990, when he introduced browser he said, “Web of information nodes which user can use at will.” Now the world has all of its attention on the web to extract whatever information they are in need of.
Having over 2 billion websites online and a quarter of the world’s population as its users, the internet acts as the pipeline for sharing information, stay updated and even connects with friends and family. With new approaches in the field as Open Data, Open Government, Open Access and Free Culture, WWW is more becoming for the current and future generations.
The internet can do profusely good things to mankind but just like any other product/service, it has certain drawbacks. Internet criticizers have questioned about the internet’s privacy and democracy. The founder has commented on the issues as “not so pretty” and further to it he has added, “it is not too late to straighten the ship’s course”. On the end note, there is no better tool than the internet that can be utilized for the greater good of mankind or it can be the tool for a man-made disaster. As we step into the 30th year of our peaceful co-existence of internet and mankind, the best we can do is to swear in as its ethical user and truthful to one’s conscience!