World Wide Web, short as WWW according to ABBREVIATIONFINDER, is a term used in computing whose translation could be World Global Network or ” World Wide Network “; It is a system of hypertext or hypermedia documents linked and accessible through the Internet. With a web browser, a user views websites made up of web pages that may contain text, images, videos, or other multimedia content , and navigates through them using hyperlinks.
The Web was created around 1989 by the Englishman Tim Berners-Lee and the Belgian Robert Cailliau while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, and published in 199 2. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of Web standards (such as the markup languages with which web pages are created), and in recent years has advocated for his vision of a Semantic Web.
Definitions
- Web page : document or source of information, generally in HTML format and that may contain hyperlinks to other web pages. Said web page may be accessible from a physical device, an intranet, or the Internet.
- Website : set of web pages, typically common to a domain or subdomain on the World Wide Web.
- Web server : a program that implements the HTTP protocol to transfer what we call hypertexts, web pages, or HTML pages. This name is also given to the computer that runs this program.
- Web 2.0 : It is the representation of the evolution of traditional applications towards web applications focused on the end user. Web 2.0 is an attitude and not exactly a technology.
- Web 3.0 : The term Web 3.0 first appeared in 2006 in an article by Jeffrey Zeldman, a critic of Web 2.0 and associated with technologies such as AJAX. There is currently considerable debate about what Web 3.0 means, and what the correct definition is.
Key concepts
- Client-Server Model
- Multiple protocol support
- A single piece of software to access all the information
- Uniform URL naming scheme
- Hypertext and Hypermedia
- HTML as a universal language
- Extensibility
Basic rules
- HTTP (Hypertext Trasmission Protocol)
- HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
- URL Uniform Resource Locator
History
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee and his team created the World Wide Web, better known as WWW, at CERN Laboratories. Its initial objective was to offer a unified means of accessing hypermedia documents from anywhere on the Internet. With the emergence of the first graphic viewer, the use of the WWW expanded.
What is WWW
It is a collection of files, called Web sites or Web pages, which include information in the form of texts, graphics, sounds and videos, as well as links to other files. Files are identified by a universal resource locator (URL) that specifies the transfer protocol, the Internet address of the machine, and the file name. For example, a URL could be http://www.ecured.cu. Computer programs called browsers such as Navigator of Netscape or Internet Explorer from Microsoft – use the http protocol to recover those files. New types of files are continually being developed for the WWW, containing for example animation or virtual reality (VRML). Until recently, readers had to be specially programmed to handle each new type of file. New programming languages (such as Java, from Sun Microsystems) allow browsers to load helper programs capable of manipulating these new types of information.
Twenty years of the web
Fewer and fewer sectors of society have been untouched in one way or another by the explosive growth of the “online” world. Although the figures vary, some studies estimate that close to 1.7 billion people, that is, almost 25% of the world’s population, are users of the Internet universe.
Two decades ago, Britain’s Tim Berners-Lee invented the web “just because he needed it,” he told the BBC. From then on, the world was never the same.
“That twenty years is nothing…” Carlos Gardel sang in his endearing tango Volver. And perhaps in few episodes of world history this expression is as appropriate as in the vertiginous development of the global Internet network in the last two decades.
The World Wide Web, or the “network,” transformed global society in such a way that many do not hesitate to compare it to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.
And it is that fewer and fewer sectors of society have not been touched in one way or another by the explosive growth of the “online” world. Although the figures vary, some studies estimate that close to 1.7 billion people, that is, almost 25% of the world’s population, are users of the Internet universe.
Something similar to what happened with the automotive industry at the beginning of the 20th century happened with the Internet. An invention that existed decades ago only reached its potential when someone understood how to massify it.
In the automotive case, Henry Ford managed to design his Model T that millions of consumers could buy cars, until that moment simple mechanical curiosities of millionaires.
Similarly, Berners Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web caused the internet, created decades ago by scientists from the United StatesDepartment of Defense and which barely excited scientists and experts in a small community, suddenly become a tool available to hundreds of millions of people.
The World Wide Web tool made the online world, previously accessible only with complicated computer codes, just a ‘click’ away.
The giants of the network
And just as the industrial age brought with it its corporate giants, enshrining companies and surnames such as Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, or Ford himself, the development of the network has enshrined its own generation of mega-companies.
Perhaps few firms better reflect the web’s dramatic economic and cultural expansion like Google.
The company, created in 1996 by two doctoral students from Stanford University in the United States based on the advice of one of its academic supervisors, quickly took control of the Internet search engine market, the guides by which users try to explore the almost infinite world of the network. The academic project of students Sergei Brin and Larry Page already reached a market capitalization of USD $ 23 billion in 2004, and it continues to grow.
With its ability to focus the normally diffuse audience of web users on its pages, Google is today seen as a titan in the advertising, media, commerce and even culture industries. For something, language academies around the world accept the inclusion of the verb “google” in their languages.
Duplex
As the Industrial Revolution had in its time, this revolution of the network also has its defenders and critics.
On the one hand, the economic expansion of the online world has left many victims in the “real” world. The wonderful simplicity of the airfare purchase portals wiped out hundreds of thousands of travel agencies. The expansion of Amazon sentenced thousands of bookstores to death. Entire industries, such as the record company and the newspaper, are reeling from the advance of the web. The expansion of Wikipedia, led by Jimmy Wales, considerably diminished the appeal of traditional encyclopedias.
Also in the cultural and political field there are good and bad consequences. The founders of Twitter, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, have seen how their invention has served to help protest movements in closed societies, and some call it an instrument of democracy.
But the fact that it has given a voice to many who did not have it, implies that ideas that some consider undesirable and even dangerous reach many more, also allowing them to interact.
Like any city
Online social networks, meanwhile, have the potential to connect individuals regardless of race, class or place of origin who share values, hobbies and interests. However, many complain that these networks, whose most colorful exponent is perhaps Facebook, have trivialized social interaction, and sometimes threaten to intrude on the privacy of their millions of users.
Like the printing press, the web allowed information, previously the privilege of a few, to become available to many, and much more than the printing press opened the doors for information sources to multiply.
However, what many consider to be too much of this information is sexual, which, beyond offending, has generated fears particularly in regard to minors.
Faced with so much chiaroscuro, perhaps it is sensible to follow the suggestion of the British intellectual (writer, comedian, actor) Stephen Fry: conceive of the virtual world as the real one.
The web is like any city, with some dangerous sites and some fabulous ones.
