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Internaut Day Might Not Be the Web Anniversary You're Looking For (fortune.com)

Posted by msmash on from the ignorance-day dept.

David Meyer, reporting for Fortune: The web arguably went public before August 23, 1991. Social media users are enthusiastically celebrating "Internaut Day" on Tuesday. They're thanking Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, for first providing public access to it on this day in 1991, precisely a quarter of a century back. The only problem is that the supposed importance of Internaut Day doesn't seem to be supported by much evidence. Berners-Lee submitted his seminal proposal for a new information management system to CERN on March 12, 1989, a date which Berners-Lee celebrates as the birthday of the web. The building blocks were specified and written up by October 1990, and the first webpage went live in December that year. So when somebody celebrates the "Internaut Day" today, it really doesn't seem like the right occasion. The report adds: According to Wikipedia, that's when "new users could [first] access" the web -- and that's what a gazillion news stories on Tuesday are supposedly celebrating. But it doesn't square with what the Web Foundation and CERN say.

10 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Shocking. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    Isn't swarming around fads driven by shoddy information what 'social media' is for? It certainly seems to be the typical use case.

  2. The first real breakthrough wasn't the web by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The first real breakthrough that brought digital communications to the masses was the various Bulletin Board systems. What did people do with them? Looked for pr0n, buying and selling stuff, uploading and downloading software, pictures, etc., sending each other messages about what they were doing ... the medium (dial-up or tcp/ip) wasn't important from the people perspective.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  3. Yeah, so? by ilsaloving · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Considering that a large portion of the globe believe and celebrate the birth of a god on Dec 25th, despite the fact that there is no evidence at all that this truely happened, I think we can probably let this inaccuracy slide.

    At least we know the internet really did happen.

    1. Re:Yeah, so? by operagost · · Score: 2

      The internet was created so that we could have OT posts like, "Internet Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Have a Religion".

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    2. Re:Yeah, so? by Maritz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No evidence Jesus was born on Dec 25th? Yes, we already know this. No evidence Jesus was born? No, the evidence is pretty solid. Evidence Jesus was God? Evidence, but highly disputed.

      Seeing as you've no links, allow me to retort. Nope, no solid evidence that the biblical Jesus was a real historical person. Nope, no evidence whatsoever that he was "god" (note the lower case G).

      It sounds like you're presupposing that the abrahamic god exists, so let me just point out that there's just as much evidence for Zeus.

      Thanks.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  4. Semantics by cdrudge · · Score: 2

    It sounds like everyone is arguing about semantics. What is considered the actual "birth date"?

    I'm a web developer. What is considered the birth date of a website? When the client comes to me with a proposal or I go to them with one? If I was Berners-Lee, it sounds like that is the birth date of the website. If the site is ready for internal testing, is that the birth date? That sounds like what CERN says it is when it was available internally but possibly not externally. Or is the site's birth date when it's publicly available, ready for the world to see and use, which is what I would call it.

    Or putting it in human terms, Berners-Lee's birth date sounds more like the date of conception, CERN's date more like when you have an ultrasound and you know it's there and can "see" it but it's not ready for the world yet, and publicly accessible when the little guy actually shoots out of mom.

  5. Internet or hyper-linked documents (a.k.a. Web)? by mi · · Score: 2
    The write-up and TFA conflate the Internet and (what became known as web). Maybe, the slines don't know any better, but Slashdot users ought to... The hyperlinked documents weren't the first "killer application" — e-mail was. The first systems weren't even using the Internet, but, according to Wikipedia:

    In 1971 the first ARPANET email was sent

    And Sir Lee's was not even the first system for linking documents/files across the networks — Gopher was. And Gopher was not merely proposed in 1991, that's when an actual system became available (though protocol was codified in an RFC only in 1993).

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  6. But... by VorpalRodent · · Score: 2

    Why no mention of Al Gore? I am outraged, I say!

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    Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
  7. Link to a copy of the original proposal by pinkushun · · Score: 2

    March, 1989

    https://www.w3.org/History/198...

  8. Should be NCSA Mosaic Day by TheSync · · Score: 2

    Look, WWW is all nice and stuff, but frankly before NCSA Mosaic was released you could not really tell the difference between Gopher and WWW, and while they were interesting to play with, it was just play (unlike USENET News which had real value :). Somehow Viola never had much impact either.

    NCSA Mosaic was originally released January 23, 1993. I gasped when I first saw it, because I had been dreaming of a global hypermedia network, and it showed that was possible. That day changed my life from someone who was an electrical engineer to someone who designed early commercial web sites.

    Version 1.0 for Windows was released on November 11, 1993, and of course that is when "normal human beings" had any chance of getting on the Web.